Page 37 of The Nanny and the Hothead
Charlotte was the nanny candidate!
“I think I could have been a good nanny. It was for a little boy—Oscar. I’ve always liked that name. It rolls off the tongue and just makes you smile.”
That’s what Holly had said when he’d asked her why she’d chosen that name.
Emotion rose in his chest, but he held it at bay. “It’s a fine name,” he stammered as the image of the boy, a boy with his eyes and crooked smile, flashed through his mind.
“But I screwed up and lost another job,” she lamented. “No, not lost—I don’t even know if I was going to get hired to be his nanny.”
“Do you need a job?” he asked, staring down at her. She’d closed her eyes. She looked like an angel—an angel with a golden key.
“I need a job. I need a Mr. Cheesy Forever. I need to go back to the beginning, hothead,” she replied, followed by one last yawn before drifting off to sleep.
He traced the curve of her neck with the tip of his index finger. “I don’t know a damn thing about a Mr. Cheesy Forever, but I can give you something, Charlotte.”
She didn’t reply. The air hung heavy around them, and he thought of his son. Releasing a weary breath, he froze when his phone buzzed. Without disturbing Charlotte, he retrieved his cell from his pocket, then read the incoming text.
It was from Madelyn.
Madelyn Malone: Did the nanny accept the position?
His gaze flicked from the glow of his cell to the woman wearing his shirt asleep on his lap. He had two options, and both would most likely end in disaster.
He tapped the keys and hammered out a one-word reply.
Six
Charlotte
Charlotte sighedas a rhythmic hum surrounded her in a gentle, rumbling symphony of sound and inhaled a deep breath. And was that coffee in the air—fresh-roasted ambrosia? It sure smelled like it.
But her moment of pre-wake-up bliss didn’t last long.
She turned her head, and immediately, her sleep cocoon gave way to a thunderbolt to her brain—at least, that’s what it felt like. She cracked her eyes open, only to have the thunderbolt transform into a cataclysmic lightning storm inside her skull. And it wasn’t just her head that was hellbent on putting her through the post-margarita ringer. Her body felt as if she’d brawled with a steamroller. She rubbed the muscles at the base of her neck and brushed her fingertips against the collar of her shirt. This wasn’t her pajama top. Shaking off the clothing conundrum because her brain couldn’t handle that level of scrutiny yet, she ran her tongue across the seam of her dry lips. She swallowed the teensy-tiny amount of saliva in her mouth. The Sahara Desert was a water park compared to her dehydrated state!
“Water, aspirin, then go back to bed,” she muttered as she pushed up onto her elbow. She peeled open her eyes a fraction wider, then clapped her hand over her mouth to restrain a scream.
Where the heck was she?
She blinked once, then twice.
This was not her crappy apartment. No, this wasn’t even an apartment.
She studied her current setting, which looked a heck of a lot like the inside of a luxury RV.
How on earth did she get here?
Then it hit her. She was inside a freaking recreational vehicle headed to God knows where!
And that wasn’t the worst of it.
Someone had to be driving this portable palace on wheels. Another scream threatened to escape. She slapped her other hand over the hand currently covering her mouth as the pieces of the puzzle came together.
She’d been flipping kidnapped!
Kidnapped!
In her twenty-five years, she’d always played the bit part, the reassuring friend, the forgettable extra. Not now! No, she’d landed her ass straight onto one of those posters withMISSINGscrawled across the top in bold lettering.
