Anne McAllister - The Playboy And The Nanny

“He must have been kidding,” she said hopefully now to the dark brooding man who sat and watched as all these thoughts flitted across her face.

Slowly, deliberately, Nikos Costanides shook his head. “No.”

“But—”

“He’s hired you to reform me.”

Mari wanted to deny it. She couldn’t. She had the awful sinking feeling that it was true.

“I can‘t—”

“You bet your sweet tail you can’t!” he said harshly. “So just march yourself up to the house and tell him the joke is on him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, go tell him you’re not going to play. That whatever he’s paying you, it’s not enough. That there’s no way on earth he can con you into staying.”

Ah, but there was. There was that enormous white elephant of a house her aunts owned—their pride and joy, their legacy from their profligate father. It ate money. They couldn’t give it up.

“Where would we go, dear?” Aunt Em’s frail voice echoed in her ears. “We’ve always lived here.”

“Can’t put Em in one of those homes,” Aunt Bett said over and over. “It’d kill her.”

Probably, Mari acknowledged, it would. Aunt Em had a bad heart. It wouldn’t feel any better if she learned about Aunt Bett’s disastrous attempt to bail them out by playing the ponies, either.

Actually having to leave their home would likely kill them both. And Mari could see that they didn’t have to leave it—she could even see that the gambling debt was paid and the house had new struts, new paint and a new roof—if she managed to keep this job and earn Stavros Costanides’ bonus.

“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

Nikos Costanides scowled at her. “Why the hell not?”

“Because I need the job.”

“What did he offer you?”

Mari blinked. “What?”

“Obviously he offered you a bundle,” Nikos said impatiently. “Fine. I’ll offer you more to leave.”

It was tempting. Terribly tempting. She wanted to take it. And yet—

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

He glared at her. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

She knotted her fingers. “My reputation is at stake.”

“What?” He looked thunderous.

“I have a professional reputation, as I said before.” She felt her cheeks warm and, certain that he could see how flimsy that excuse was, she felt compelled to add, “Not the sort you imagined, but such as it is, it’s important to me,”

His jaw clenched. Their eyes battled.

Mari’s heart beat faster, her pulses raced. She felt like a racehorse in the home stretch, given its head. “All you have to do is shape up,” she reminded him a little breathlessly.

“Like hell. I’ll be damned if I’ll knuckle under to his threats!”

“Yes, well—” She took a careful shallow breath, then shrugged lightly. “Maybe you can’t.”

A nerve in his temple pulsed. He shoved a hand through disheveled dark hair. His eyes narrowed. “You’re saying you’re staying, Ms. Lewis?”

Say no, she told herself. Walk out. To hell with your reputation, your aunts, the hundred thousand dollars, the way he kisses! Where’s your common sense?

She didn’t know. She only knew that something had happened when Nikos Costanides kissed her. She had been kissed before. Heavens, she’d even been engaged before. But when Ward had kissed her it had been pleasant, warm, and in a few seconds, gone.

Even now the imprint of Nikos’s mouth was still on hers. The taste of him was a part of her, reaching into her. And somewhere deep inside it was as if a fundamental answering chord responded.

She hadn’t known such a response existed. She wanted desperately—perhaps foolishly—to know more.

Sanity—despite her reputation, her aunts, the money——told her to say no. It was foolish. It was insane to agree to be nanny to a grown man for any reason or any amount of money.

Mari was practical. Mari was sensible. Mari was grounded.

“People who are grounded have never flown,” her free spirit uncle Arthur always said with a twinkle and a hint of challenge in his eye.

She took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

CHAPTER TWO

SHE had lost her mind.

A twenty-nine-year-old virgin who’d never felt the slightest tingle—not even from the kiss of the man she’d been engaged to for three years—had no business taking on a man who looked like he ate nuns for breakfast!

But she’d committed herself.

Mari didn’t see that she had any choice.

It wasn’t just the fact that she’d given her word—even if Stavros Costanides had fudged a little bit on his. It wasn’t just that it was a matter of honor. And pride. And integrity. And the fact that she was good at what she did.

It was that recently she’d felt incomplete. Unfinished. Inadequate somehow.

At least Ward had certainly thought she was!

“You want to know why I’m breaking it off?” her fiancé Ward Bishop had said last month when he’d come to tell her he’d had second thoughts about marrying her. “It’s because you’re a cold fish, Mari. I want to make love and you talk about the weather. I touch your breasts and you grab my hands. I kiss you and you don’t respond.”

“You mean I don’t tear your clothes off-or mine,” Mari had retorted scathingly, hurt beyond reason at her fiancé’s outspoken words.

“You don’t even unbutton them,” Ward snarled.

Later he’d apologized, had said he’d never meant to be so blunt. “You’re a fine person, Mari,” he’d said in a conciliatory, unctuous manner that made her want to wipe the floor with him. “It’s not your fault. You just aren’t...passionate.”

“I don’t remember you burning down any buildings either!” Mari retorted, stung.

“Not with you I haven’t,” he’d agreed readily enough. Which she supposed meant that he and the new love of his life, Shetley—the twenty-three-year-old he was dumping her for—were setting whole forests on fire!

Well, fine. Let him. Let him have Shelley! Let them burn up the world!

She didn’t care. Much.

But, as little as she wanted to admit it, long after Ward had gone his accusation still hurt. It hurt thinking there was something wrong with her, that other people had something she was lacking, some fire deep within that God had apparently forgotten to build.

And then this afternoon, completely unexpectedly, totally out of the blue, something had happened-something deep, strong, passionate. And all she could think was that God apparently hadn’t forgotten to build the fire at all.

It just wasn’t Ward who’d been given the match!

But...Nikos Costanides? A—

“How old are you?” she asked a glaring Nikos as she came back into the cottage with her luggage.

“Thirty-two,” he growled as he watched her come in with her luggage.

A thirty-two-year-old Greek playboy? Because she had no doubt now that a mindless frivolous playboy was exactly what he was.

Mari shook her head. What could God have been thinking about?

Nikos apparently wondered the same thing. He was sitting right where she had left him, scowling at her. While she’d been out finding Thomas the gardener, he had put on a pair of white shorts, and she supposed that was some concession. Still, he looked very adult, very masculine and very intimidating as he again sprawled bare-chested in the chair, watching like a sulky child as Thomas, laden down with suitcases, followed her in.

“How old are you?” he asked insolently.

She lifted her chin. “Twenty-nine.”

“You don’t kiss like you’re twenty-nine.”

Mari felt her cheeks flush. The feelings of inadequacy reared their head again. She wondered if that meant Nikos hadn’t felt what she’d felt.

At his impertinent words Thomas made a disapproving noise in his throat, and Mari knew she should be feeling more embarrassed than she was, but in fact she was mostly curious. Hadn’t he? She looked at Nikos closely.

Immediately his gaze shifted away.

Yes! He had felt it! Mari felt a twinge of triumph. Hugging herself inwardly, inadequacy vanquished for the moment, Mari said to Thomas as blithely as she could manage, “Don’t mind him. He’s just sulking.”

“I am not sulking!”

His outrage made Mari hide another smile. “You can take them through here,” she said to Thomas, ignoring Nikos. She started toward the hallway that led away from the small living room, then looked back. “I presume that’s where the bedrooms are?” she said over her shoulder.

Nikos grunted something. His dark gaze was brooding as he looked at her again.

“Did he kiss you, miss?” Thomas asked worriedly.

“Oh, yes.” She tried to sound blithe, matter-of-fact and indifferent, not at all as if, by doing so, he had turned her world upside down.

“She’s not any good at it,” Nikos said loudly.

“I can see why your father thinks you need a nanny,” Mari said pleasantly. “Someone needs to teach you how to behave.”

Then she sailed out of the room and down the hallway. A strategic exit after having the last word was always a nanny’s strength.

“A nanny?” Thomas’s eyes goggled.

“Mr. Costanides has a strange sense of humor apparently,” Mari said. It was all she was going to say.

“Didn’t know he had a sense of humor,” Thomas mumbled. Then, “Which room, miss?”

Behind her Nikos called, “She can sleep with me.”

“Mr. Nikos!” Thomas was clearly scandalized.

“She loves it when I talk dirty.” Nikos’s voice followed them.

Thomas sputtered.

“Children act up when they think we’re watching, Thomas,” she said firmly. “I advise you to ignore him. Come along. I’ll find my own room.”

Down the short hallway beyond the small living room and kitchen, Mari found three bedrooms. The biggest, with a view overlooking the garden, was clearly the one Nikos was inhabiting. The king-size bed was unmade. There was a laptop computer and a lot of boating magazines scattered on the desk. The better to choose his next yacht from, Mari thought.

The room itself was actually very Spartan-looking, done in whites and tans and browns with just a hint of black. Somber. Harsh.

Rather like its occupant, Mari thought.

“Like my bed?” Nikos called. “It’s plenty big enough to share.”

She ignored him. She tried to ignore the bed, too. But the thought of sharing it with Nikos was astonishingly vivid. She could imagine him naked against those white sheets, could envision herself, equally naked, tangling with him—

Oh, girl, stop this! She’d never had such blatant fantasies in her life!

She wondered if it had something to do with the squid her Aunt Em had fixed for lunch. Was squid an aphrodisiac?

She turned and hurried out of the room.

The bedroom across from Nikos’s was equipped as an office, but with a daybed instead of a sofa or pair of chairs. It didn’t look as if anyone was using it at the moment. No big surprise there. If Stavros imagined that Nikos needed “shaping up,” it wouldn’t be because he was a workaholic!

She could have stayed in this room, but somehow Mari didn’t want to be that close to Nikos Costanides—whether because she thought he might get the wrong idea, or whether she didn’t trust herself, she wasn’t sure.

Fortunately there was a third bedroom along the back of the house. It was a long narrow room that seemed to have been converted from a sleeping porch and was more casually decorated than the rest of the house. Airy and sunlit, with balloon curtains done in white eyelet, it was soft and romantic. Soothing, not passionate.