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MELISSA KNOCKED on the front door of the farmhouse early the next morning. She was wearing her lucky skirt, a filmy sky-blue cotton number that fell to midcalf, with a white top. The air was scented by the jasmine entwining the pillars of the veranda, and from the paddocks came the soft grunting of the pigs.
The door swung open. Gregory’s black eyebrows arched. “Good morning. Are you out of eggs already?”
He had on a charcoal-gray suit with a crisp white shirt open at the neck. A blue silk tie was slung over his shoulder. Freshly shaved, he smelled faintly of lime and leather.
“I thought you were a farmer,” she declared.
“Only part-time. I’m a lawyer.” Gregory arranged the tie around his neck and flipped the wide end around the narrow one to draw it through the loop. “Thompson, Thompson and Finch, Main Street, Tipperary Springs.”
Melissa heard the thud of small bare feet running on hardwood before Alice Ann poked her head around her father’s leg. “You came back!”
“Hi, Alice Ann.” Melissa smiled at her. “How are you?”
“I’m afraid it’s not a very good time,” Gregory said. “As you can see, I’m getting ready for work. And Alice Ann is going to play school.”
“Are you going in your pajamas?” Melissa asked, bending down to tweak the girl’s uncombed hair.
Alice Ann giggled and pulled at the top of her Miss Piggy pj’s. “No.”
“Go get dressed, quickly now,” Gregory said. Then he turned to Melissa. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to apply for the nanny job, after all.”
Alice Ann had started to leave, but on hearing this she began to jump up and down. “Yay! Say yes, Daddy!”
Gregory hesitated, glancing at his watch. “I have to be at work in forty-five minutes and I need to drop this one off first, but I guess I could give you a quick interview.” He stepped back. “Come in.”
Melissa moved past him into the foyer. In the lounge room to her left unfolded laundry was dumped on one of a facing pair of dark leather sofas. The wood coffee table between them was strewn with papers, coffee cups and dirty plates. A toy barn with plastic fences enclosing small herds of horses, cows and sheep took up most of the area rug.
Gregory led her past that room and into the kitchen, where he waved her to a seat at the table. “Would you like coffee? Only instant, I’m afraid.”
“Instant’s fine.”
While the kettle boiled, Melissa helped him clear away the breakfast dishes so they would have a spot to sit. Her heart sank. This man didn’t need a nanny; he needed an army of maids.
Alice Ann skipped back into the room. She’d dressed herself in a lilac T-shirt, a mauve skirt that was back to front and dark purple socks. Her uncombed brown hair fell in a tangle below her shoulders. She carried her father’s yellow legal pad and pen from the sideboard to the table. Climbing on a chair, she said, “Come on, Daddy. Let’s start the interview.”
“Just a minute.” Over at the counter Gregory made coffee and got out milk and sugar.
“I’ll start.” Alice Ann picked up the pen and turned to Melissa with an air of great seriousness. “Will you tell me bedtime stories?”
Melissa replied, equally solemnly, “Definitely. I don’t always read with accuracy but I have wonderful expression.”
Frowning in concentration, Alice Ann painstakingly printed a couple of wobbly capital letters on the legal pad. She looked up. “What do you mean, ackracy?”
“Accuracy means correctness,” Melissa explained. “Sometimes I change the story as I go along to make it more interesting.”
“I like the sound of that.” The girl drew a big tick on the legal pad next to the letters she’d printed. She turned to her father. “Don’t you, Daddy?”
Gregory brought the coffee over and sat opposite Melissa. “I’ll be asking the questions from now on,” he said. “Go brush your hair, please.”
“Oh, but I don’t want to miss anything!” Alice Ann stayed where she was.
Melissa raised her eyebrows at this act of insubordination, but Gregory chose to ignore it for the moment, so she shrugged. “Fire away.”
“Are you prepared to live on the premises?” he asked.
“That suits me very well,” Melissa replied. “At present I’m staying with my parents because my house is rented out. I’ve been away for some months…on holiday.”
“I see. Well, my plan is to clear out the cottage this week and turn it into the nanny’s quarters. But the previous owners left a great deal of old furniture stored there,” Gregory said. “Until I get to it, the nanny will have to occupy the guest room in the house.”
“I’m adaptable,” she told him.
Gregory tapped his pen on the legal pad. “I’d like to hear about your experience caring for children. What are your qualifications?”
Ah, now that was her whole problem. She wasn’t trained for anything. “I’m really good at playing dress up. I can bake cookies, too. And make things out of play dough.”
Good grief, she sounded like a candidate for day care herself. She didn’t blame him for that skeptical expression. How would Ally respond to these questions? Her sister would be brisk and efficient. She would radiate competence. Melissa sat up straighter and placed her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t fidget. “I did a lot of babysitting when I was younger. Even now I look after friends’ kids all the time.”
“You wouldn’t spend the day playing,” Gregory informed her. “The successful candidate will be expected to perform light housekeeping duties such as cooking and cleaning, in addition to teaching school readiness.”
“I know my ABC’s,” Alice Ann declared proudly.
“You’re smart!” Melissa said to the little girl. Then she added to Gregory, “Is there to be no playtime?”
“I didn’t say that. If you’re efficient, you should have an hour or so in the afternoon.”
“Oh, I’m very efficient,” Melissa assured him. “Why, I can…” she racked her brain “…wash dishes and talk on the phone at the same time.”
Gregory made a note on his legal pad. Alice Ann did the same, laboriously printing random letters of the alphabet. Melissa craned her neck to see what Gregory was recording about her, but his writing was deeply slanted and close, illegible upside down. His hands were long and strong, the nails clean and well cared for. There was none of the ground-in dirt she used to see in her uncle’s hands, although a thin jagged cut ran across the base of one thumb, where he must have sliced it on wire or something similarly farmlike.
“Punctuality is essential,” Gregory said, looking up. Melissa straightened and paid attention. “You’d have to take Alice Ann to and from play school every morning, which lasts from nine o’clock until noon.”
“Punctuality is my middle name.” Melissa made a show of checking her vintage watch, which kept lousy time but looked great with her outfits. Oops. Quickly she dropped her hands back in her lap before he could see that it was off by ten minutes.
“I don’t approve of corporal punishment,” Gregory added. “Alice Ann never does anything naughty enough to warrant a spanking.”
“I would never do that. I would…” Melissa tried to remember what her friend Jenny called it when she put Tyler on a stool in the hall. Something to do with time…“Time out. I would give her a time out.”
Gregory nodded approvingly and Melissa breathed a sigh of relief. Until he asked, “Can you cook?”
“Can I cook!” Melissa scoffed, bluffing outrageously. “My brother-in-law is the head chef at Mangos. He taught me everything I know.” Which amounted to almost nothing although that wasn’t Ben’s fault.
“Do you have a résumé?” Gregory asked.
“I do!” Melissa was delighted to be able to answer truthfully. She fished in her purse for a couple of folded sheets and handed them across the table. Too late, she realized she’d brought the original, not the revised version Ally had typed up for her.
Gregory perused the marked-up document, his frown growing deeper by the second. He was good-looking for an older man. Okay, slightly older. Fine lines crinkled the corners of his eyes, but his hair was thick and lusciously dark. As Melissa watched, a strand broke away and drifted down his forehead.
“Have you had many other applicants?” Melissa asked.
“It’s only fair to tell you I’m seriously considering offering the job to Minerva Blundstone, a retired educator with six years’ experience as a nanny.”
“Oh. She was my teacher in sixth grade.” Melissa’s heart sank. There was no way she could compete with ol’ Blundy. She was very strict.
“Mrs. Blundstone is a witch,” Alice Ann said with an exaggerated shudder. “She’ll turn me into a mouse, like in that movie. Then a cat will catch and eat me!”
“That’s enough nonsense. Go wash your face and do your teeth, then bring me the hairbrush.”
“But Daddy—”
“No buts.”
With an elaborate sigh, Alice Ann climbed down from the chair and ran into the hall.
“She has a wonderful imagination,” Melissa commented.
Gregory’s dark brows came together. “Sometimes it can be a problem.”
“How so?”
He turned his pen end over end in his long fingers. “The problem is Benny, the runt she’s taken a fancy to. This is my first crop of weaners, and Alice Ann has no idea he and the others are going to be butchered. She’s forever concocting wildly improbable scenarios about his future. Very soon she’s going to be confronted by the reality of farm life.”
“I guess it has to happen sometime.”
“Her mother passed away a year ago. Even though Benny’s only a pig, I hate to burden Alice Ann with another death in her life, another loss. I’m finding it very difficult to break the truth to her.”
“I hope you don’t want the new nanny to give her the bad news?” Melissa asked, horrified at the thought.
“No,” Gregory assured her, “that’s my responsibility.”
“Poor little girl,” Melissa said softly. “I’m sorry about your wife.”
“I was never married to Alice Ann’s mother,” he replied, his jaw tightening. “She—”
“Do my hair, Daddy,” his daughter said, running back into the room waving a small pink brush.
Gregory took the brush and started tugging it through her snarled hair. He came to a knot and left the brush stuck there. Tapping Melissa’s résumé, he asked, “You’ve held a variety of jobs, but none remotely connected to child care. Plus there’s a big gap in your work history. Were you on holiday for the whole ten months?”
“Come here, honey,” Melissa called to Alice Ann. She straightened the girl’s skirt, then extricated the brush and gently worked through the tangles, strand by strand. She glanced at Gregory, knowing her explanation wasn’t going to sound good. “I was traveling with the Cirque du Soleil.”
“You ran away and joined the circus?” he asked skeptically.
“Were there lion tamers?” Alice Ann made claws with her fingers and roared at Melissa.
“No, it’s not that kind of circus,” she said, laughing. “My former boyfriend is a highwire artist,” she replied. “Our relationship didn’t work out so I came back.”
“You up and ran off for ten months,” Gregory mused. “That suggests a certain lack of stability on your part.
“Or adventurousness.” Melissa finished combing out the tangles. She picked a pair of sparkly purple hair clips from the handful Alice Ann had brought and pinned them on either side of her head.
Gregory studied her through narrowed eyes, then dropped his gaze to his notes. Finally he looked up. “Why do you want to be a nanny?”
Melissa opened her mouth, but no brilliant lies came out. Finally she settled on the truth, or as close to the truth as she could get without giving Diane away. “I want to do Something Big.”
“Something Big?” His eyebrows lifted, as if her answer surprised him. “Something Big,” he repeated thoughtfully, and his expression softened. “You believe looking after children is that important?”
Melissa nodded. She did, actually, although in all honesty she hadn’t imagined herself doing it until about twelve hours ago. Gregory seemed impressed, though, so she just smiled and tried to look like a competent, caring mother substitute.
“I’ll have to think it over and get back to you.” He got up, indicating the interview was over, and held out his hand. “Thank you for coming by.”
“Thank you.” She wasn’t expecting the pulse of warmth as their palms clasped, or the jolt when his eyes met hers. “I—I’ll need that résumé back, if you don’t mind.”
Gregory scribbled down her phone number on his legal pad and handed her the sheets. “Your good copy, is it?”
Ignoring his comment, Melissa crouched to say goodbye to Alice Ann and drew the girl into a hug. “If I don’t see you again, take care. You’re just perfect. Don’t let anyone turn you into a mouse, or anything else you’re not.”
Alice Ann nodded, eyes wide. “I’ll watch out for that mean old witch. I’ll turn her into a bat!”
Melissa rose to her feet and started down the steps of the veranda. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
Yeah, right, she thought as she walked back to her car. When pigs fly! What a disaster. She gave a last smile and a wave to Gregory and Alice Ann, then put her car in gear and set off. He was probably calling Mrs. Blundstone right now. Soon Alice Ann would be reading at a fourth-grade level. Melissa would wind up selling time-shares in the Simpson Desert over the phone to little old ladies. Diane and her kids would be found and sent back to her abusive husband. And Gregory would believe he’d done the right thing and wonder why he was still lonely.
Melissa drew up with a start. Gregory, lonely? Where had that come from? He was a successful lawyer, a handsome man. He most likely had heaps of friends, not to mention women hanging around. But there was something in his eyes that said he was looking for more. Maybe like her, he didn’t even know what that something was. Or who. Okay, now she was getting fanciful.
Her mobile phone rang just as she was about to turn out of his driveway onto Balderdash Road. “Hello?”
“The job is yours.” Gregory’s voice sounded deeper over the phone.
Melissa slammed on the brakes and the car slewed sideways in the gravel. “You mean it?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Can you move in tomorrow?”
“I’ll move in tonight!”
“You are keen.” Gregory chuckled. “Okay, then. Come for dinner at six.” He paused. “I did mention, didn’t I, that I would also expect you to help out with the pigs occasionally?”
“The pigs?” she repeated slowly.
“Yes,” Gregory said. “Is that a problem?”
Melissa swallowed. “No, not at all. I love pigs.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“YOUR ROOM IS HERE, across the hall from Alice Ann’s. Mine is at the end of the corridor, past the bathroom.” Gregory stepped back, allowing Melissa to go in first.
“This is lovely.” She dropped her purse and overnight bag on the floor and slowly looked around.
