Read Online Hired: Nanny Bride by Cara Colter - Free Book Online Page B

trip for nothing.”
    “I’m willing to risk it. I’d love to see it. It’s a beautiful place in the pictures.” He always did his homework. “Just being able to have a look at the lodge would be great. I understand your grandfather logged the trees for it and built it nearly single-handedly, with a block and tackle.”
    Hesitation. “Maybe we have been hasty in our judgments. We really don’t know anything about you.”
    “No, you don’t.”
    “It probably couldn’t hurt to talk.”
    “That’s how I feel.”
    “No lawyers, though. No team. Unless—”
    “Unless what?”
    “How long are your niece and nephew with you?”
    A few more hours. “It hasn’t quite been decided.”
    “Look, why don’t you bring them up for a few days? Sally and I will get to know you, and a little about yourplans for Moose Lake. The kids can enjoy the place. This is the first year we haven’t booked in families, because we’re trying to sell and we didn’t want to disappoint anyone if it sold. We’re missing the sound of kids.”
    It was an answer to a prayer, really, though how anybody could miss the sound that had just filled his apartment, Joshua wasn’t quite sure.
    Still, the situation was shaping up to be win-win. He could give the kids the vacation he’d promised his sister. He could woo the owners of the Moose Lake Lodge.
    It occurred to him he should ask the nanny if she thought the trip would be in the kids’ best interests, but she had a way of doing the unpredictable, and she probably had not the least bit of concern in forwarding his business concerns.
    She might even see it as using the children.
    Was he using the children?
    The little devil that sat on every man’s shoulder, that poked him with its pitchfork and clouded his motives, told him of course not!
    Told him he did not have to consult the nanny. He was the children’s uncle! Susie had wanted a camping toy. This was even better! A real camping experience.
    “We’ll be there tomorrow,” he said smoothly. “I’ll land at the strip beside the lake around one.” He was juggling his schedule in his head. “Would two days be too much of an inconvenience?”
    “Two days? You mean fly in one day, and leave the next? That’s hardly worth the trip. Why don’t you make it four?”
    He couldn’t make it four. His schedule was impossible to squeeze four days out of. On the other hand, if he stayed four days, he could send the kids home knowingtheir mother and father would be only a day or two behind them. He could claim he had given them a real holiday.
    Plus he could have four whole days to convince the Bakers that their lodge would be safe in the hands of Sun.
    “Four days,” he agreed smoothly. “It sounds perfect.”
    “We’ll be at the runway to pick you up.”
    Joshua put down the phone and regarded it thoughtfully. The usual excitement he felt as he moved closer to closing a deal was strangely absent. Somehow he thought maybe he had just created more problems than he had solved.

CHAPTER FOUR

    D ANNIE woke up and stretched luxuriously. The bed was phenomenal, the linens absolutely decadent. She snuggled deeper under the down comforter, strangely content, until she remembered the day held nothing but uncertainty.
    Had Joshua booked them tickets for home? Why did she feel sad instead of happy? Was she falling under the charm of all the stuff? The luxurious rooms, the million-dollar views?
    Or was it his charm she was falling under? She thought of the smoke and jade green of those eyes, the deep self-assuredness in his voice, the way his thumb had felt, on her lip.
    Whatever remained of her contentment evaporated. She felt, instead, a certain queasiness in her stomach, similar to what she felt on a roller coaster as it creaked upward toward its free fall back to earth. Was it anxiety or excitement or some diabolical mixture of both?
    She touched her locket, reminding herself where these kinds of thought led. She was not even over Brent. How