Project: Daddy. Patricia Knoll
At least he didn’t holler whenever Mac came near him.
Just so she wouldn’t think he was completely hopeless, Mac got both children glasses of water to drink, but when she treated him to another of those questioning looks he had to admit, “No milk, either.”
He hustled the children into the family room to watch Saturday morning cartoons. When they were lying on the floor in front of the screen, he breathed a sigh of relief that they’d be safely occupied for a while, and turned back to the kitchen. He’d never interviewed a housekeeper/nanny before, but he had a basic idea of what questions he needed to ask. Any good parent, even a temporary one, knew that there were certain things kids needed: food, cleanliness, companionship, discipline. He figured if he paid for the first one, and paid the nanny enough, she could provide the rest of the list.
In the kitchen, he found that Paris was busy going through the cupboards and refrigerator. She had located a piece of paper and a pencil and was making a list.
“Wait,” he said, holding up his hand. “Before you make plans to move in and take over, I need to know a few things about you.”
“Sure,” she answered breezily, as she clucked over the bareness of his refrigerator. He frowned at her. It wasn’t bare. He had two six-packs of beer and a couple of stale doughnuts in there, as well as five different kinds of gourmet mustard. He didn’t usually eat at home, but picked up breakfast, lunch and dinner at any fast-food place he happened to pass on his way to and from work.
“My name is Paris…oh, I already told you my name. I’m a widow.” He couldn’t read her expression or her tone of voice when she said that, but he thought she sounded very matter-of-fact. “I need a job and this looks like something I can do.”
Mac strolled over to where she was standing, slapped his hand against the refrigerator door to shut it, and said, “What exactly do you mean by that?”
She tilted her head and smiled. A California jay had nothing on this girl in the perkiness department. “It means I can take care of this house and your children.”
“They’re not my children,” he admitted, then stepped back when he realized he could detect the scent of her perfume. It smelled like April violets and somehow went straight to his head. He needed coffee. Turning away, he reached for the coffeemaker and began making the brew.
“They’re not?”
“Elly and Simon are my sister’s kids. Sheila arrived a couple of days ago, just after I got home from work and said she needed for me to take care of them for a while. She was on her way to Africa on a photographic safari.”
“She’s a photographer?”
Mac growled, “She doesn’t know a lens cap from a viewfinder. Her new boyfriend is a photographer and she went along to keep him company. Unfortunately, she had two little responsibilities standing in her way.” As Paris made a soft sound of distress, Mac viciously ripped the plastic lid off a can of coffee and scooped grounds into the filter. It still infuriated him that Sheila had shown up blithely assuming that he would take the kids, kissed them goodbye and left them, wailing loudly, in his faulty care.
He didn’t know why he was surprised. The whole family had spoiled Sheila and done her bidding throughout her life. Her divorce had come about because her husband, as feckless and selfish as she, wouldn’t cater to her the way the Weston family had. The husband had taken off shortly after the divorce, had never even seen Simon. When Sheila had decided to go on safari, big brother Mac had seemed the logical choice to take care of her children.
Poor little tykes, he thought, pouring water into the coffeemaker and switching it on. Dragged from pillar to post their whole lives, then left in the care of the one person who was the least likely to know what to do with them. Surreptitiously, he studied Paris who had seated herself at the table after carefully checking to make sure she’d cleaned up all chocolate smears. He wondered how capable she was of caring for the two children. So far, he hadn’t pulled any hard information out of her except that she was a widow. His gaze drifted over her as he wondered what had become of her husband and how long the man had been dead. She didn’t seem too broken up, but then, who was he to judge how misfortune affected anyone? The good citizens of Cliffside said the lousy things that had happened in his life had only served to make him meaner and more stubborn. Too bad he couldn’t disagree with them.
He poured coffee for both of them and handed her a cup. She sipped it cautiously and opened her mouth as if to ask for cream or milk, then apparently recalled that he had none, so she drank stoically. Mac supposed he shouldn’t have made it the way he usually did, strong enough to float an ax handle.
“Do you have a resume?” he asked abruptly.
“Certainly.” She had left her suitcase by the front door, but had set her purse on one of the kitchen chairs while tending to Elly. Paris opened the large bag and pulled out an envelope which she handed to him with a flourish, her eyes full of the same bravado he’d seen moments before. Mac wondered about that as he pulled out the folded page and smoothed it.
He scanned it quickly and his eyebrows inched up. Finally, he bent down one corner of the paper and looked at her over the top. She seemed to be busy examining the blue sky outside the window. When she felt him looking at her, she brought her attention back to him and gave him a sprightly smile. “Impressive, isn’t it?” she asked on a hopeful note.
Mac stared at her, stared at the paper, then at her again. “Organized the annual fund-raiser for the Junior League?”
“And topped our previous year’s earnings, I might add,” she said with a firm nod and a tap of her fingernail on the tabletop.
“Chairman of the country club ball committee?”
“Everyone in attendance said it was the best ball they’d ever seen.”
“Scandinavian cooking classes?”
“My Danish frikadellar are to die for,” she assured him as she linked her fingers together loosely on the tabletop and sat forward as if waiting for his applause.
He scanned the resume again, just in case he’d missed something. “There’s no evidence here that you’ve ever held a real, salary-paying job.”
Her hands tightened around each other. “Oh?”
“Have you?” he prompted.
“Held a salaried position? Noooo,” she answered, drawing the word out. “I can’t say that I have.”
“All you’ve ever done is volunteer work?”
“I’ve done it very well, though.”
“Mrs. Barbour…”
“Paris, please.”
He ignored her interruption and soldiered on. “These accomplishments have nothing to do with taking care of children or running a house.”
“That’s not true. If you’ll look carefully, you’ll see I had extensive experience doing baby-sitting all through high school. I didn’t get an allowance so that was how I earned spending money. Also, I spent a summer caring for two children while their mom was sick.”
He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Baby-sitting is far different than being a nanny.”
“The duties are basically the same.”
“But the responsibility isn’t. Taking care of two children for a few hours is very different than caring for them day in and day out.”
“That’s true,” she agreed. “Fortunately, I’m versatile and can learn quickly. Why, I’d never even been involved with a fund-raiser before I headed up the one for the Junior League, but it did far better than expected.”
Mac’s eyes narrowed. “That’s fine, but when exactly was the last time you actually took care of children?”
Her eyes made a quick survey of the corners of the room as if looking for spider webs—like