The Nanny Plan. Sarah M. Anderson
with Rosita the maid shooing her up the stairs so fast that she could barely take in the beautiful details of the entry room, that Trish heard it—the plaintive wail of a deeply unhappy baby.
It was pretty safe to say that Trish had absolutely no idea what was going on. But up the stairs she went, bracing herself for what baby-related carnage awaited her.
She was not wrong about that.
Nate Longmire—the same Boy Billionaire who had given an impassioned talk on social responsibility, the same Nate Longmire who had insisted on paying her dry-cleaning bill, the very same Nate Longmire that had looked positively sinful in his hipster glasses and purple tie—stood in front of one of those portable playpens that Trish had coveted for years. Nate was in a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. That part wasn’t surprising.
What was surprising was that Nate was trying to hold a screaming baby. The child was in nothing but a diaper and, unless Trish missed her guess, the diaper was on backwards.
“What on earth?” Trish demanded.
* * *
Nate spun at the sound of the exclamation from behind him just as Jane squirmed in his arms. Oh, hell—why were babies so damned hard to hold onto?
“Uh...” he managed to get out as he got his other arm under Jane’s bottom and kept her from tumbling. The little girl screamed even louder. Nate would have thought that it was physically impossible for her to find more volume from her tiny little body, but she had.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” the woman said. The next thing he knew, Jane had been lifted out of his arms by a beautiful woman with striking dark eyes and—
Oh, God. “Trish!”
“Yes, hello,” she said, slinging the baby onto her hip with a practiced air. “Where are the diapers?”
“Why—what—I mean—you’re here?”
Trish paused in her search for diapers and gave him a look. It was a look that he deserved. Never in his entire life had he felt more like an idiot. “Yes. We had an appointment.”
He started. “Your appointment?”
“Yes,” she said, as she turned a small circle, surveying the complete and total destruction of the room that, until seven days ago, had been a sitting room and now was supposed to be a nursery. Even Nate knew that it wasn’t a nursery, not yet. It was a hellhole. He couldn’t tell if she was finding what she was looking for or not.
His mind tried to work, but that was like trying to open a bank vault where all the tumblers had rusted shut. He was so tired but Trish was here. He’d never been so happy to see a woman in his entire life. “You’re here about the nanny position?”
That got him another look—but there was more pity in her eyes this time. “Mr. Longmire,” she said in an utterly calm voice. She snagged a blanket and, with the screaming baby still on her hip, managed to smoothly lay the cloth out on the floor. “We had an appointment in your office at five today to discuss a matching grant to my charity, One Child, One World.”
Oh, hell. “You’re...not here about the nanny position?”
Trish located a diaper and then fell to her knees in an entirely graceful way. She carefully laid Jane out on the blanket. “Oh, dear, yes,” she soothed in a soft voice that Nate had to strain to hear over the screaming. “You’re so cold, sweetie! And wet, too? Oh, yes, it’s so hard to be a baby, isn’t it?” Trish changed the diaper and then looked up at him. “Does she have any clothes?”
“Why are you so calm?” he demanded.
“This is not difficult, Mr. Longmire. Does she have any clothes?”
Nate turned and dug into one of the suitcases Stanley had loaded onto his private plane. “Like a dress or something?”
“Like jammies, Mr. Longmire. Oh, I know,” she said in that soothing voice again. “I know. I think he’s trying his best, but he doesn’t know how to speak baby, does he?”
For a blissful second, Jane stopped screaming and instead only made a little burbling noise, as if she really were talking to Trish.
Then the screaming started right back up with renewed vigor.
Nate grabbed something that looked like it could be jammies. Orange terry cloth with pink butterflies and green flowers, it had long sleeves and footies attached to the legs. “This?”
“That’s perfect,” Trish said in that soothing tone again. Nate handed over the clothes and watched, stunned, as Trish got the wriggling arms and kicking legs into the fabric.
“How do you do that? I couldn’t get her into anything. And I couldn’t get her to stop screaming.”
“I noticed.” Trish looked up at him and smiled. “How are you feeding her?”
“Um, my mom sent some formula. Down in the kitchen.”
Trish rubbed Jane’s little tummy. Then, like it was just that easy, she folded the blanket around Jane and tucked in the ends and suddenly, Nate was looking at a baby burrito.
“One second, baby.” Then, to Nate, she said, “Don’t pick her up—but watch her while I wash my hands, okay?”
“Okay?” What choice did he have? The baby was still crying but, miraculously, her volume had pitched down for the first time since Nate had seen her.
“Bathroom?” Trish asked.
“Through that door.” As he stared at Jane, he tried to think. For a man who had done plenty of thinking while pulling all-nighters, he was stunned at how much his brain felt like the sludge at the bottom of a grease trap.
Trish Hunter. How could he forget her? Not even a funeral or a solid two weeks of sleep deprivation could erase the memory of her talking with him in a coffee shop. She’d been smart and beautiful and he’d—he’d liked her. He’d gotten the distinctive feeling that she’d been interested in him—not just his money.
Crap. He must have forgotten about their appointment entirely when his world fell apart. Which—yes, now he remembered—had occurred moments after his conversation with Trish in the coffee shop.
The woman he’d felt a connection with was the same woman who had just walked into his house and changed his niece’s diaper.
Wait.
A woman he’d felt a connection with had just changed his niece’s diaper. And gotten her dressed. And wrapped her into a burrito. And, if the indications were to be believed, was about to go down and fix a bottle of formula.
He’d been expecting a candidate for the position of nanny.
Maybe she had arrived.
Trish came out, looking just as elegant as she had before. “There now,” she said in that soft voice as she scooped Jane up and cuddled the baby against her chest. “I bet you’re hungry and I bet you’re sleepy. Let’s get some milk, okay?” Jane made a little mewing sound that came close to an agreement.
Trish looked at Nate, who was staring. “Kitchen?”
“This way.”
Nate felt like he needed to be doing something better here—but he was at a loss. All he could do was lead the way down stairs and into the back of the house, where Rosita was looking like the last rat on the ship. When his maid saw Trish cuddling the slightly quieter baby, her face lit up. “Oh, miss—we’re so glad you’ve come.”
Trish managed a smile, but Nate saw it wasn’t a natural thing. “Any clean bottles and nipples?”
Rosita produced the supplies, babbling on in her faint accent the whole time. “I tried, miss, but I never much cared for children.” She got out the tub of formula and a gallon of milk and started to mix it.
“Wait—stop.”