Mother in Training Read online

  She was very pleased with herself for that, she decided. “Well, she’s got a new best friend and a new wardrobe. At seven, her world is just about perfect.”

  “Thank you.” The words came out of nowhere.

  Zooey tried to second-guess what he was talking about. “For the tea?”

  He shook his head. “For my daughter’s happiness.” He moved the cup away and studied her. “You’re really a very special person, Zooey.”

  Compliments embarrassed her. She never knew what to say. Declaring, “No, I’m not,” didn’t quite seem the way to go here. Still, the situation begged for something. “Your kids make it easy.”

  Which just made her that much more unique in his book, Jack thought.

  “Not to hear the other nannies talk about it. They thought the kids were hell on wheels. Of course, they weren’t very thrilled with me, either. Said I was too demanding. And ‘too invisible,’” he said, quoting one of the women. “Whatever that means.”

  Zooey leaned her chin in her hand, gazing at him. “You look pretty visible to me.” Then she stopped. Taking a napkin out of the holder on the counter, she draped it over her index finger and wiped it along the corner of his mouth. When he pulled his head back, she said, “Pink isn’t your color,” and held up the corner of the napkin with traces of lipstick on it.

  He cleared his throat. “Rebecca kissed me.”

  “Well, I didn’t think she tried to brand you with it.”

  Zooey was sitting too close. And his resolve was only so strong. He wasn’t going to be able to resist her much longer. Wasn’t going to keep his curiosity about what she looked like beneath that jersey under lock and key more than a couple more minutes.

  Squaring his shoulders, he stood up. “I’m going to turn in,” he said abruptly.

  “I’ll stay down here and clean up,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.

  She sighed as she heard him go up the stairs. For every step she took forward, there was another step back, waiting to be taken.

  And in the end, she was standing in the same place where she’d begun. And damn confused about how she got there.

  Chapter Nine

  Zooey closed the front door behind her. She’d just ushered her charges into the house after picking up Emily and Olivia at school and dropping the latter at her house.

  There was homework to get to and dinner to start, but Zooey firmly believed in balancing out work with play. She had milk and chocolate chip cookies waiting for the children in the kitchen. Leaving the treats out without having Jackie get into them had been the tricky part.

  Under Zooey’s watchful eye, both children took their turn at getting up on the wooden step she had butted up against the sink and washing their hands before sitting down at the table.

  Zooey paused to wipe the area around the sink after Jackie had finished. There was enough water there to fill half a duck pond.

  “Are you excited about Halloween?” Zooey asked Emily as she hung up the towel again.

  “Halloween, Halloween,” Jackie cried, providing the excitement that was missing from Emily’s face.

  He was like a three-foot-tall tape recorder, repeating everything he heard, Zooey thought. But the little boy wasn’t her main concern at the moment. Emily was. Granted, Zooey had gotten the child started. Once or twice in the last few weeks she’d even heard Emily begin a conversation when she was around Olivia. But she needed more. Something to give her more confidence, make her feel as if she blended in better.

  The displays of Halloween candy in the supermarket—the displays Jackie had made a beeline for before she managed to grab him—had given her an idea. Emily could have a Halloween party, one for the children in the neighborhood and their parents. It wouldn’t hurt Jack to do a little mingling, either—with someone other than Rebecca.

  Getting permission for the party was going to require some finessing on Zooey’s part when it came to Jack. But before she undertook that, she needed to get Emily on board. If the little girl regarded the holiday in the same manner that most kids regarded broccoli, there was no point in knocking herself out.

  Still, she couldn’t picture any child not liking Halloween.

  “Maybe,” Emily finally said. The single word was accompanied by a vague, careless shrug of her small shoulders.

  When Zooey and her siblings had been little, they couldn’t wait for Halloween to come around. To them, it was almost as big a holiday as Christmas. She didn’t understand Emily’s lack of enthusiasm.

  She sat down at the table, taking a cookie. There was already a circle of crumbs around Jackie’s plate, along with splotches of milk. She was letting him sit on a booster seat instead of his high chair today, and was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that move.

  “Don’t you like dressing up for Halloween, going trick-or-treating?” Zooey pressed.

  Emily looked at her for a long moment as if she was talking about something entirely foreign. “We don’t go trick-or-treating.”

  This might be easier to pull together than she’d thought. “Because you have a party?” Zooey asked.

  Emily shook her head. “No.”

  And then again, maybe not. “Do you dress up?” Again, Emily shook her head. “Why not?”

  Emily sighed, and it was clear to Zooey that it was a wistful sound. “The last two nannies we had said it was silly.”

  How had Jack managed to find such heartless creatures? What kind of an ad had he put out? “Wanted: one nanny, completely devoid of a sense of humor or any memories of childhood.”

  Zooey dunked her cookie in milk and held it out to Emily. “You’re a kid. You’re supposed to be silly. And anyway, dressing up for Halloween isn’t silly,” she said defensively. “It’s a tradition. It’s fun.”

  Emily now appeared to be hanging on every word. Her eyes were wide. Hopeful. “Do you dress up on Halloween, Zooey?”

  “Absolutely.” She leaned closer to the girl. “How would you like to have a Halloween party this year?”

  If eyes could truly sparkle, then Emily’s did. “A real party?”

  Zooey grinned broadly. “A real party.”

  There was awed disbelief on Emily’s small, heart-shaped face. “With balloons and everything?”

  “With balloons and everything,” Zooey echoed, making a note to find the biggest, prettiest balloons she could. She didn’t believe in scary Halloweens, but ones filled with princesses and unicorns and everything magical.

  And then suddenly, the enthusiasm that had been building in Emily’s voice all but vanished. As did the light from her face. “Daddy won’t like it.”

  “You leave your daddy to me,” Zooey told her. “He’s going to love it.”

  Emily obviously still had her doubts, but it was also obvious that she thought Zooey could walk on water and work miracles whenever she needed to. “You think?”

  “I think.” It was more than a statement, it was a promise.

  Emily jumped up from the table and threw her arms around her. Her heart bursting, Zooey hugged the girl fervently.

  “You’re the best, Zooey.”

  “Yes, I am,” she laughed, squeezing Emily a little harder. And praying that the man she’d hardly seen in the last week—ever since his so-called date with the neighborhood vixen—could be convinced to come around.

  “Best!” Jackie crowed, scrambling off his chair and sending the booster seat flying as he tried to claim his share of his nanny.

  Zooey’s heart stopped for half a second as she grabbed him in time to keep him from crashing to the floor.

  “You are going to be the death of me, boy,” she told him.

  “Death!” he yelled.

  “But not before the Halloween party,” she added, looking at Emily.

  “Not even after,” Emily said fervently.

  There was no stopping the warm feeling once it took hold. Zooey wrapped her arms around the children and hugged them hard.

  That night she waited up for Jack to ask him a
bout the party. Loaded for bear, she intended to give him both barrels if necessary, use every trick she could think of to get him to agree, including guilt.

  So, after she had put Emily and Jackie down for the night and made sure they’d fallen asleep, she went back to the living room and planted herself in the oversize chair that faced the doorway. It was extremely seductive in its comfort.

  Zooey sighed as she sank into it. She’d put in a long day with the children. Teachers were giving second graders a lot more homework these days than they had when she was Emily’s age, she thought grudgingly. Emily was very bright, but Zooey wasn’t about to fluff off the job of checking the little girl’s work by just assuming everything was correct—which, of course, it had been.

  The next moment, Zooey found herself wondering if Jack would soon be married to someone else who would help Emily with her homework.

  The thought brought a pang with it, a sharp one that went straight to Zooey’s heart even as she struggled to dismiss it. It wasn’t supposed to matter to her whom the man married, whom he finally selected to act as a mother to his children.

  It wasn’t supposed to, but it did, she admitted with another sigh as she checked her watch. It was getting late.

  She had Jack’s dinner prepared, covered and waiting for him in the warming oven. By her count, it had been there for several hours.

  Didn’t the man remember his way home anymore?

  That was the last thought that passed through her head before she nodded off to sleep.

  The sound of the front door closing had Zooey jerking her head up. Blinking, she automatically looked down at her watch. It was a habit, a holdover from her college days, when she’d had a tendency to oversleep and miss her early classes.

  She’d been asleep for almost an hour. Grabbing the armrests, Zooey pushed herself up out of the chair. A second later, she realized that she’d gotten up too fast. A wave of dizziness, something that plagued her occasionally whenever she forgot to eat right, had her head spinning. She swayed just as Jack was entering the room.

  “Zooey, what’s the matter?”

  She felt his arms close around her, catching her before she could sink back down to the chair. His voice held a note of concern. Forcing herself to focus, she took a deep breath, then let it out again.

  “Nothing. I fell asleep in the chair and got up too fast,” she explained simply.

  Jack searched her face to assure himself there wasn’t more going on that she wasn’t mentioning. Her color began to return.

  “What are you doing up?” he asked. He’d deliberately come home at this hour to avoid seeing her. The last thing he’d expected was to have to rush forward and catch her in his arms before she fell. “It’s late. You should be in bed.”

  She took another breath. It was hard to get her bearings when he was this close to her. “That’s what you’re supposed to say to your daughter, not me.”

  “She’s not up,” he pointed out. “You are.” Jack realized that he was still holding her. And that he liked it far too much. “Can I let go of you? Can you stand on your own?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  He dropped his hands, and something inside of her felt bereft.

  “As for what I’m doing up, I’m waiting for you to come home.”

  Concern returned, driving a chariot straight into the arena. He looked toward the stairs and the children’s bedrooms. “Is something wrong?”

  Turning back, he watched her work her lower lip between her teeth. “Only if you say no.”

  Clear as mud. His day had been long and his nerve endings were raw. That didn’t leave a lot of room for patience. “I know why the kids like you so much. You talk in riddles.”

  Zooey needed him to be in a receptive mood. A full stomach helped. She backtracked. “There’s dinner in the warming oven.”

  “I ate.”

  She looked at him, not ready to give up. “What?”

  “I ate,” he repeated.

  Zooey shook her head. “No, not what did you say, what did you eat?”

  He thought for a moment. He could remember chewing, but nothing had actually registered on his palate.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Some chickeny thing one of the law clerks brought in from a fast food place.”

  There had been three of them staying late, working on their individual cases. When the intern had volunteered to make a food run, Jack had given him a ten, but no instructions beyond getting something that wasn’t too greasy. He vaguely recalled being told they were chicken strips. Fries had come with that, but he’d skipped them.

  Jack started for the stairs, and was surprised when Zooey hooked her arm through his and tugged him in the direction of the kitchen.

  Now what? “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you to the kitchen for a real meal.” She wasn’t about to take no for an answer. “I made meat loaf. The kids loved it.”

  He frowned as he crossed the threshold into the kitchen. The lights were all on. Instead of appearing lonely, the room seemed welcoming. He was over-tired, he decided.

  “I don’t like meat loaf.”

  Zooey picked up two pot holders. “You’ll like this one.”

  He didn’t seem to have a say in anything anymore. What was worse, he was too tired to be annoyed about it. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re damn pushy?”

  She looked at him over her shoulder, her mouth curving. “I might have heard a rumor to that effect. You’ll like the meat loaf,” she repeated, taking a plate out of the oven. “Honest.” She closed the stove door with one swift movement of her hip, then brought the plate to the table. “It has carrots, two kinds of peppers, onions, scallions and sour cream in it, not to mention a whole bunch of other things. It’s a meal all by itself.”

  He had to admit that it did smell tempting.

  But then, so did she. Despite her rapid-fire delivery, there were still traces of sleepiness around Zooey’s eyes, and he found that exceedingly sexy for some reason. He had another date set with Rebecca, their third, but that didn’t take the edge off the way he was reacting to Zooey. It should have, but it didn’t. Just as he’d been afraid it wouldn’t.

  He’d kept away from the house, from her, for most of the last ten days, and that still didn’t negate or even blunt the attraction he felt toward her. If anything, it sharpened it. Zooey intrigued him, amused him, attracted him.

  Any way he sliced it, Jack felt doomed.

  And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, because he needed a nanny and the kids were wild about her. And she seemed to be the only one who could keep them from being wild, period.

  Doomed.

  “Here, try some.” Zooey moved the plate closer to him and handed him a fork. “Sit,” she instructed, when he still remained standing.

  He did as she asked, his knees bending mechanically until he made contact with the chair. Under her watchful eye, he sank his fork into the meat loaf, corralled a piece and brought it to his lips. He fully expected not to taste anything at all, because his mind was definitely not on food at the moment.

  But the moist, flavorful forkful managed to break through the barriers around him. Surprised, he took another sampling. And then another. It tasted better each time.

  “Well?” she asked when he said nothing. That he was eating it was certainly testimony that he liked it, but she wanted him to say the words. The man needed to express himself, so that he could verbalize his feelings to his children, who needed to hear them a lot more than she needed to be complimented on her cooking. But a start had to be made somewhere.

  “Not bad,” he murmured.

  “Not bad?” she echoed. If he’d been one of her brothers, he would have been on the receiving end of a head-rattling shove. Curbing the impulse, she demanded, “Did they repossess your taste buds, too?”

  He laughed then, at her expression, at her choice of words and at her exasperation over his so-called indifference to what he had to admit was probably the b
est meal he’d had in a while. Which was saying a lot, seeing as how she’d been doing all the cooking since January.

  “This is good,” he admitted.

  Damn straight it’s good. She waved for him to keep moving his fork. “Eat up,” she told him. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “So what is it that you want to talk to me about?” he asked after three more forkfuls had found their way into his mouth.

  Sitting down again, Zooey took a deep breath, bracing herself for an argument. Knowing she needed to win it. “I thought you might have a party for Emily.”

  “A party?” he echoed in surprise. “Why? It’s not her birthday.” And then he paused for a second, trying to remember what month it was. “Is it?”

  Zooey stared at him, stunned. Just how wrapped up in his work was he? “You don’t know when your daughter’s birthday is?”

  “Of course I do.” He was annoyed that she could even suggest such a thing. “It’s June. June 11th. Working late, I just lose track of time sometimes,” he admitted. “The weeks and months get jumbled up.” This wasn’t the first time he’d had to stop to get his bearings, unable to recall what month it was.

  “Dusty books will do that to you.” Not wanting to alienate him, she turned to the business at hand. “I’m talking about a Halloween party,” Zooey specified. “I think you need to throw a Halloween party for Emily.”

  “Need?” he echoed. The woman used the strangest words sometimes. What he needed was peace and quiet, neither of which seemed to be in his immediate future. “Zooey, I don’t know the first thing about throwing a party.”

  She hadn’t really meant that he was going to be the one in charge of it. That would have been a disaster waiting to happen. “Lucky for you, I do.”

  Finished with the meat loaf, he set down his fork and took another sip of water. “I never doubted it. But before you get carried away here, why do I ‘need’ to throw my daughter a Halloween party? I thought things were going well for her and Odette—”

  “Olivia,” Zooey corrected. “The girl’s name is Olivia. And they are, but Emily needs to branch out a little more. She needs to learn how to have fun.”