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Straightening up the second time was even harder than the first time. Clutching her suitcase, she shut the car door and headed for the house. She felt as though she was waddling, but couldn’t be sure. She was teetering slightly from side to side…was that waddling?
Melissa scolded herself again for dwelling on Brad and put on a bright smile as she rang the doorbell. She didn’t exactly feel bright, but she could fake it for the children’s sake.
The door was opened by a tall, lean man in a green-and-white pinstriped cotton shirt, the long sleeves folded to above his elbows, and jeans that were wet at both knees. He had auburn hair and green eyes and was, in a word…gorgeous. His sinewy forearms were damp and sudsy and he was holding a chubby, redheaded cherub with rosy cheeks. The towel-wrapped toddler was obviously fresh from the tub and smelled like watermelon-scented bubble bath.
Melissa was beginning to think she really was asleep and dreaming, because this man fit so perfectly with her idea of a hunky husband doing domestic duties, and he was doing them in her dream house! Mrs. Avery was one lucky lady.
After a couple of minutes, Melissa realized that not only she, but Professor Avery, seemed at a loss for words. He was staring at her, probably in the same way she was staring at him. But he couldn’t possibly be staring for the same reasons. She’d been struck by his good looks and obvious “good daddy” traits. Why he’d be speechless at the sight of a ready-to-burst pregnant lady in denim capri pants with a stretch panel, and a wrinkled white tent of a blouse, was beyond her comprehension.
Then it occurred to her that he might be a tad irritated that she was nearly half an hour late. “Professor Avery, I’m sorry. I know I was supposed to be here at nine,” she said, offering an apologetic smile. “I won’t be late again.”
Still he said nothing.
She was about to break the awkward silence once again when he finally said something. Something she hadn’t expected at all. “Missy? Missy Richardson?”
Melissa frowned. He knew her? And he knew her by her high-school nickname, the name no one but Brad, her parents and her two brothers still called her? But she didn’t know him. Certainly if they’d ever crossed paths before, she’d remember.
“I’m sorry, have we met?”
He smiled. “I’m Charles Avery.”
Melissa stared. He had a wonderful smile. Straight, white teeth. Sexy dimples. But she had no idea who he was.
His smile wavered a little. “We went to school together.”
Melissa searched frantically through her memory, but her continued silence told all. How embarrassing. She didn’t remember him! But maybe she could fake it.
“Oh, yes. Charles Avery. So…have you seen anyone from the old gang lately? I confess I lost track years ago.”
Now Professor Avery’s smile changed from a spontaneous expression of pleasure to one of wry resignation. “If you’re asking about ‘the old gang,’ you don’t remember me, Melissa. We didn’t exactly hang out with the same crowd of kids.”
Melissa blushed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t remember you. Please tell me how we…er…knew each other.”
“I was in your trig class, senior year.”
Melissa remembered her trigonometry class. It had been a subject that threatened her grade point average. Her predominantly right-brained mentality had always made any sort of advanced math challenging, and she’d have never received a decent grade in that class if it hadn’t been for—
Melissa’s hand flew to her mouth. “You sat behind me. You were the boy with the—”
“Glasses so thick and round you could use them for hockey pucks,” he finished for her, again with that slight, crooked smile.
Now Melissa remembered Charles Avery. But not like this…She couldn’t help it. She gave him another once-over, from head to toe, from gleaming auburn hair to wide shoulders, trim hips and endlessly long legs in snug jeans and trendy athletic shoes. Could this be the skinny, shy guy with bright red hair and glasses that obscured what were obviously very beautiful eyes? He’d been shy and polite and incredibly smart back then. And very, very nice. In fact, if not for him…
“Now it’s coming back to me,” she murmured, her hand still hovering near her mouth. “You were the reason I got a decent grade in that class. You tutored me. You came to my house for three weeks, right?”
He nodded. “Four nights a week.”
“Till I was finally able to comprehend what Mr. Daynes was trying to teach us.” Her hand dropped to her side and she asked, not very hopefully, “Did I ever thank you properly?”
He shrugged, then shifted the cherubic toddler he was holding from one hip to the other. “Well, I remember something about some cookies—”
“Dad, is this the temp’rary nanny?”
Melissa looked down and noticed two little faces peering around Charles’s legs. There was a redheaded boy and a little girl with a mass of curly, bed-rumpled hair so full of static it was sticking to her father’s pants. She was still in her pajamas.
“I think so,” Charles replied, casting Melissa an assessing look, his gaze lowering ever-so-briefly to her pregnant stomach. “They didn’t give me a name. Are you the nanny we requested from the agency, Melissa?”
Melissa could feel her cheeks burning. She didn’t think Charles sounded exactly sure whether or not he wanted her answer to be yes. As well, it suddenly occurred to her that Charles might be shocked to see her in this job. Back in high school she’d been president of the Future Business Leaders of America. Despite her slight math handicap, she’d always been good in business classes back then and had had big plans.
But look at her now! She was embarrassed. Very embarrassed. Charles wasn’t making her feel that way, and she loved being a part-time nanny, but it didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that Charles Avery, labeled a nerd in high school and excluded from her popular circle, had made something of himself, while she on the other hand…
At thirty-one she was already divorced, struggling to get the college degree she’d put off while helping Brad through school, and had to work a part-time job to make ends meet while she paid off debts from her failed marriage and tried to succeed at a business venture she should have started years ago. Actually, it was the things about her life Charles didn’t know that were most embarrassing, so if she could keep them a secret, maybe she’d make it through the week without dying of shame.
“Yes, I’m your nanny,” she finally answered, speaking directly to the little boy. “And I can’t wait to get started.”
Now she looked pointedly at Charles, who took the hint and stepped aside to allow her to enter the house.
“Well…that’s great,” Charles said, not very convincingly as he shut the door behind them and led Melissa into a large living room. He motioned to a chair. “I’ll introduce you to the kids, then we can…you know…get started.”
As Melissa settled in the chair Charles indicated, he and the children sat down on a sofa directly opposite her. Charles seemed to be trying to avoid staring at her pregnant belly as he introduced the children—Christopher, four, Sarah, three, and Daniel, two—but none of the children were shy about staring. As soon as his father stopped to draw breath, Christopher directed a question to the object of all their thoughts. “Are you going to have a baby or somethin’?”
Melissa smiled. “Oh, it’s not a something. It’s a baby, all right. I’ve seen pictures.”
Christopher’s eyes widened. “Wow. Already? But how—?”
“When are you due, Melissa?” Charles broke in, probably trying to curtail Christopher’s questions as well as to discover for himself whether or not he had to worry about a pregnant woman going into labor while she was supposed to be taking care of his children.
“Not for two weeks,” she told him, hoping he found that fact reassuring.
He nodded, but there was still a tiny fissure of worry between his eyebrows. “And…and how’s Brad doing?”
Melissa should have been expecting the question, but it still took her by surprise. She had no idea what to say. Did she dare admit that she and Brad were divorced? That the golden couple from East High had had a tarnished marriage? That she was paying off credit card bills from Brad’s extravagant support of his mistress, the rent on that woman’s apartment and all the little trinkets he bought her?
Probably bored by now with the grown-up talk, Christopher scrambled off the couch, grabbed a ball from the corner of the room, and began tossing it in the air.
Charles returned to the subject. “He’s probably pretty excited about the baby…Brad, I mean. Is this the first for you two?”
That’s when Melissa did it. She did it without thinking. She did it without considering repercussions or the very obvious moral arguments against it. She did it almost before Charles finished speaking.
She opened her mouth and out came the biggest lie of her life.
“Brad’s dead,” she stated abruptly. “Killed several months ago in a car accident.”
Charles’s face immediately reflected his horror at so insensitively mentioning her poor, dead husband. “I’m sorry, Melissa. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know. How could you?” Melissa automatically answered, while internally rationalizing what she’d just done. It’s just a small concession to my pride, she told herself. After this week, I’ll never see Charles Avery again. It’s just a little white lie. A little…white…lie.
Charles’s horrified expression softened to one of sympathy and concern. “I won’t say I know just how you feel. People say that all the time, trying to be comforting. But, actually, it’s possible that I do know a little of how you feel, Melissa. When Annette died—”
“Annette?” Melissa quavered.
“My wife,” Charles answered with a nod. He studied her face for a moment, then said, “Oh, I see. You didn’t know, either.”
“Your wife is—?”
“Yes. She’s been gone since Daniel was just a month old. She was killed in a car accident, too.”
“But I thought…The agency told me your wife was away to a funeral or something,” Melissa explained faintly.
“They obviously got their facts mixed up,” Charles said. “But it sounded pretty hectic at the agency when I called this morning. It’s my permanent nanny, Mrs. Butters, who’s away at a funeral in New Orleans.”
Melissa was sick with shame! She’d told him Brad was dead to avoid revealing the embarrassing truth. She didn’t want to admit that Melissa Richardson Baxter had made a shambles of her life. That she’d been duped and dumped on by her husband for more than a decade before finally seeing the light and getting a divorce. That she, the stupid, deluded half of East High’s golden couple, had continued being stupid and deluded for twelve long years! But Charles’s wife had really died!
“I’m sorry, Charles,” Melissa said feelingly. “So sorry.” But he had no idea how sorry she really was, and for more than he could ever imagine. She’d claimed falsely to have endured a tragedy that Charles had actually lived through.
“It’s been a while,” Charles said with that slight, crooked smile of his again. “I’ve got great memories, but I’m doing fine now. And so are the kids.”
Emboldened by the sight of his older brother having fun despite the presence of a stranger in the house, Daniel squirmed out of his father’s arms and started skipping around the living room in his towel. Sarah couldn’t resist, either, and got down to chase him.
Charles watched the playing children for a moment, then turned his gaze back to Melissa, his smile slipping away and his eyes darkening with renewed concern. “But how are you doing, Melissa. It can’t have been very long since—”
Melissa shook her head vigorously. “Please, Charles, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he assured her. “I understand completely.”
But Charles didn’t understand, and Melissa was going to make sure he never did. It was going to be difficult, but for the next week she was just going to have to live with her horrible lie and hope Charles respected her wishes never to mention Brad again.
After a sober pause, Charles took a bracing and cheerful tone. “Why don’t I fill you in on our routine around here as I give you a tour of the house, Melissa? We’ll go to Daniel’s room first so we can get some clothes on this little rascal.” He grabbed Daniel as he scooted past, the toddler now naked as a jaybird because Christopher had stolen the towel and was swinging it over his head. Sarah giggled.
Melissa agreed to Charles’s suggestion with a nod and tried to smile, but she couldn’t meet his eyes.
GEEZ, I REALLY BLEW THAT! thought Charles as he led the way to the boys’ shared bedroom. She’s probably still too grief-stricken about Brad’s death to talk about it. I’m not going to say another word about him unless she brings up the subject first.
Not talking about Brad was actually fine with Charles. He was sorry the guy was dead, but he’d never liked him in high school, and the main reason was because of Melissa. If she only knew how he’d bragged in the locker room about all his sexual exploits with other girls, laughing indulgently at Melissa’s old-fashioned notion about “saving herself for the wedding night.” Brad had announced that it was fine if Melissa wanted to wait till marriage for sex, but he didn’t share the same viewpoint. And if Melissa wasn’t willing, there were plenty of other girls who were.
Yeah, Brad Baxter was Charles’s idea of a first-class jerk back then. But Melissa had stayed married to him for all this time and now found it too upsetting to talk about his death, so the guy must have changed over the years. People did change. In fact, hadn’t Charles’s own physical appearance altered so much that Melissa didn’t recognize or remember him when she’d first showed up?
But who was he kidding? Charles thought with a secret, self-deprecatory smile. Melissa might not have remembered him even if he’d looked exactly the same as in high school. After all, it had taken her no time at all to completely forget his existence the moment their tutoring sessions were over. She’d promised to come by the house with her special-recipe, chocolate chip cookies as a thank-you for his help, and Charles had waited for days afterward, sitting at home when he could have been out with friends, making sure his hair was combed, his teeth brushed, his clothes neat and clean.
But she’d never showed up.
And he never saw a single cookie.
He got over it, though. He realized he’d been a fool to allow himself a crush on the school’s most pretty and popular girl, anyway.
Still…she really should have made him those cookies. It was funny how he still remembered that little slight, and how it still gave him a twinge of irritation and disappointment. After all, he’d given up outings with friends and his own study time to help her with her math. But as sweet as she could be—and he remembered she could be very sweet—Melissa was pretty self-absorbed back then. Or maybe he should say, Brad-absorbed.
Charles shook his head. High-school crushes…what a joke. In the big scheme of things, they usually didn’t turn out to be very important.
While Charles dressed Daniel, he quickly explained to Melissa his busy schedule for the next week. He was relieved to notice, as they talked, that the children were warming to Melissa and she to them. Sarah, usually the most shy, had climbed up on Melissa’s lap and was confiding something in her ear.
However, this didn’t stop Christopher from butting in with his own questions.
“What do we call you? We call Mrs. Butters, Mrs. Butters. Are you a missus, too?”
Christopher had already jumped off the couch and had been playing and pretty much ignoring the adults when Melissa told Charles about Brad’s accident.
Melissa darted a glance at Charles—it was the first time she’d looked directly at him since the dead-husband debacle—before she answered Christopher. “Yes, I’m a missus, too. But you can call me Melissa.”
“Missus Melissa?” Christopher laughed. “Sounds funny.”
“No, just Melissa,” Melissa clarified with an amused smile.
Christopher nodded. “Okay. Are you a good cook? Mrs. Butters makes the best blueberry pancakes. How old are you? Mrs. Butters is real old. More than fifty, even. Do you have any other kids, Melissa?”
“That’s enough questions for now, Christopher,” Charles said. “You’re going to tire Melissa out before she’s even here an hour.”
And Melissa did look tired. Oh, she was as pretty as ever, and while pregnancy became her, he knew the last month could be a trial. Annette’s three pregnancies had made him well aware of that fact.
He just hoped she could handle the kids and all the work that went with them. If she stayed through Saturday, as arranged, she’d be within a week of her due date.
What was the agency thinking, anyway, sending out an eight-and-a-half months pregnant woman for a job like this? Charles wondered, frowning and worried.
And why did it have to be Missy Richardson?
Chapter Two
After the tour of the house—which was just as homey and commodious as she’d envisioned it—Melissa was again managing to look Charles directly in the eye for more than thirty seconds at a time. She was going to try to forget she’d told him “the big lie” and enjoy the next week with his three adorable children. His work schedule, as he’d outlined it for her earlier, would keep him shut up in his study for most of the day, anyway, or teaching classes at the college. She’d see very little of him.
While she wasn’t dead yet—just pregnant and divorced and perpetually tired—Melissa was not immune to the charms of a handsome, well-educated, successful family man like Charles Avery. Under other circumstances, she’d like to get to know him better. But she didn’t dare spend any more time with him than necessary, just in case the truth—that Brad wasn’t dead yet, either, just dead to her—exploded out of her mouth in a moment of weakness.
While Melissa got acquainted with the children and the lay of the house that morning, Charles more or less hung around…probably to make sure it was safe to leave his children in her care. By noon, Melissa felt sure she had matters well in hand. She and the children were getting along great. Sarah’s hair was in neat pigtails, tied on the ends with her favorite ribbons, Daniel was dressed and seated in his high chair squashing banana slices with the heel of his chubby little hand, and Christopher’s questions were being answered as quickly as Melissa could manage.
As well, she was having no trouble finding everything in the kitchen necessary to make tuna-salad sandwiches for lunch. Mrs. Butters was evidently very organized and put things in places that made sense.
As Melissa scooped mayonnaise into a bowl, Sarah stood on a stool next to her and “helped” by sampling the pickle relish straight out of the jar with her fingers. Christopher still talked nonstop as he got the milk out of the refrigerator and promptly spilled some on the floor. Now Daniel was throwing his flattened banana slices—those that were still intact—against the wall, seeing which ones would stick.
Melissa was unperturbed. This was typical toddler behavior. Her back was to the door, but Melissa could feel Charles hovering and watching from the hall. She grabbed two paper towels, handed one to Christopher to clean up the small puddle of spilled milk, and dampened the other to use in wiping Sarah’s sticky fingers. She finished this task just in time to catch a banana slice while it was airborne, then turned to confront her employer.
He seemed chagrined to be caught watching, but she just smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Charles. I can manage. The kids will be fine. I’ll be fine. But you won’t be fine if you’re not prepared for that lecture Saturday. Isn’t that why you hired me? So you could get some work done?”
“Well…yes.”
“So go and do your work.”
He hesitated, then said, “You’re right. I’ll go do my work. But first I should warn you, Daniel is a very picky eater. What he doesn’t like he either hurls across the room or dumps down his pants.”
Melissa laughed. “I see. So, does Mrs. Butters keep a list of his likes and dislikes?”
