The Playboy And The Nanny. Anne McAllister
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.