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Susan had made hot dogs and chips—but had put a steak in the refrigerator to thaw in case he did live up to his promise. She also made him a baked potato and salad, fixed a martini extradry, and got out the Harry Connick, Jr. CDs he liked. For an hour, Connick’s soft and sultry jazz and the smell of home cooking had filled the house.
Then, around six, she had admitted to herself that he might, just might, not come home early. If she were truly honest with herself, she would know it was a billion to one shot that he would even remember his nanny’s birthday.
Much less return from work with the promised cake, present, and on time.
She had started baking the cake while the children ate their dinner—feeding them their hot dogs was a hard concession to reality. But she knew she felt the disappointment in his not coming more acutely than the children. They scarcely missed the successive nights he didn’t come home until they were already in bed.
Dean Radcliffe shouldn’t be expected to come home early for his nanny’s birthday. Susan sat back in her chair and shook her head at her own naive and heartfelt anticipation.
She had even worn her best blouse to top her usual sturdy jeans. She had hand-washed the blouse and mended the wrist where the seam was frayed. She had sewn the blouse years earlier from a piece of fine gold brocade she had found on sale at a junk store. She had thought at the time the color would set off her pale blond hair nicely.
But now Susan didn’t think even a gold blouse could make her hair look all that good. It was damp with sweat from the oven’s heat, held back by a scrunchie and dotted with icing. Even the prized blouse had some speckles of purple, yellow and red food dye.
She didn’t feel like eating. Pushing her plate away, she took a couple of dog biscuits from her jeans pocket.
“I didn’t forget you, Wiley,” she said, holding them out to the eighty-pound German shepherd, who had awakened at the telltale sound of Susan rubbing those treats together.
The children savored their cake for several minutes—Baby Edward eating only the icing and Chelsea making a hash of the fluffy insides—and then Henry asked the question he asked every night
“Are you going to tell the story of the Eastman bears?”
“Only if Chelsea gets her pj’s on and all of you brush your teeth.”
Instant and complete obedience.
In ten minutes, Henry found his favorite pillow and spread out across the bottom of his elder sister’s bed. Chelsea, in her Barbie doll nightgown, pulled the covers up to her neck. Susan sat at the head of the bed, Baby Edward on her lap. Lit by the golden hall light, the bedroom seemed a gateway into a wonderful paradise.
A paradise littered with discarded towels, children’s clothes, toys and well-worn shoes.
A paradise guarded by Wiley.
A paradise ruled by bears.
Several times, Susan looked up to see the children’s collection of Eastman teddy bears aligned on the dresser top. And she continued the tale she had told the night before, which was really just a continuation of the story of the night before that.
In fact, the story she had created about the Eastman bears extended as far back as any of the Radcliffe children could remember—though, in fact, Susan had only started working for the family the year before. A year after their mother’s death.
Baby Edward’s head drooped to Susan’s shoulder. Henry squirmed, rolled around and finally found the perfect position. Chelsea closed her eyes.
I wish this were mine, Susan thought, letting herself be selfish for just one final second. And then she realized that she had already gotten her wish. They were here.
Maybe Dean Radcliffe wasn’t with them, but her crush on him was so excruciating that he’d just make her nervous.
No, in a life already beat down with reality’s harshness, Susan had a way of seeing the perfection in her day.
“And then Sister Bear walked all the way to the magic castle,” she continued, finding her place in the story.
Dean Radcliffe tossed his keys on the hallway console and leafed through the pile of envelopes. Junk mail, requests for money, invitations to flashy charitable events Nicole would have loved. Why couldn’t people just send money to help out their favorite charity—instead of requiring a black-tie event in return?
He pushed the mail to one side and walked through the darkened living room, carrying a cake box and a dozen roses.
Nicole was still in this house, though she had been dead for almost two years. He wondered if her death was what fueled his insatiable desire for work—never wanting to face the moment in the day when there as nothing left…but to come home. He raked his fingers through his blue-black hair and strode through the marbled hallway.
He paused as he reached the dining room. The crystal chandelier cast a faint golden glow on the remnants of a party—paper plates, noisemakers, half-eaten pieces of cake.
He shuddered.
Late again.
He really hadn’t wanted to be.
Susan seemed like a nice nanny—in fact, she was the only person who would stay.
So he should make an effort.
Had wanted to make an effort.
Had made an effort.
He had spent a good two or three minutes with his secretary, Mrs. Witherspoon, telling her he wanted a cake, a dozen roses and a present from the jewelers. And Mrs. Witherspoon, who had worked for him since he graduated college and had worked for his father before him since the Jurassic Age, had taken care of everything with her usual pursed-mouthed efficiency.
He put the cake box down at the head of the table and pulled the small blue velvet jewelry box from the inside pocket of his charcoal gray suit jacket. He opened the box and studied the simple, silverlinked bracelet with three charms—two were silhouettes with Henry and Edward engraved in bold, block letters and one silhouette had pigtails and was engraved with Chelsea’s name.
Simple. Nice. Festive.
But nothing a young woman could get the wrong idea about. A decidedly perfect nanny gift. Mrs. Witherspoon had done an excellent job.
Too bad he had missed the little party, but surely Susan couldn’t expect that he would leave the strategic planning meeting for the Eastman Toy Company takeover just for her birthday!
No woman could expect that of him, especially not a sensible nanny like Susan.
Chapter Two (#ulink_89e49114-e243-5797-98fb-a33745c77aa1)
“And then Brother Bear came up with a great idea,” Susan said. “He thought if they took a kitchen towel and made it into a sail, they could get across the big sherbet lake…”
“Daddy’s home,” Henry whispered.
“Daddy’s home?” Chelsea hissed.
“Daddy?” Baby Edward asked groggily, opening one eye and then closing it. He snuggled farther into Susan’s warm, soft bosom.
Wiley looked up from his sleep, arching one eyebrow in an imitation of alertness.
Dean Radcliffe climbed up the last landing up to the children’s wing and appeared at the doorway, a tall shadow backlit by the hall light.
“Oh, Daddy,” Henry said, poised between happiness and uncertainty about his father’s mood.
“You missed Susan’s birthday,” Chelsea said accusingly.
“Now, Chelsea,” Susan warned.
As Dean stood in the doorway, all Susan’s sensible thoughts about him being out of reach flew out the window.
She loved him—and could kick herself for loving him.
And he, she reminded herself sternly, barely noticed her. His mind, as always, was on his work.
His only concession to the lateness of the hour was that his burgundy silk tie was pulled a bare inch away from the white Oxford shirt collar. His suit was severely, but most expensively, cut. His eyelids were sooty but, though he had left the house at six that morning, his emerald eyes were as piercing and quick as if he had just awakened.
He raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture that Susan recognized as meaning his head ached.
It should—his days were long, his work was grueling and he came home every day to children who reminded him of the wife he lost. With their blond hair, their freckles, their blue eyes so much like the wife who had died so tragically, so prematurely.
Susan was sure he must have loved his wife very much and mourned her deeply.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Radcliffe,” Susan said, easing off of Chelsea’s bed while managing to hold Baby Edward in a comfortable sleeping position. “Children, give your father a kiss good-night. Then to bed. Henry, pick up your pillow—”
“No, it’s all right. I’m interrupting,” Dean said, raising his hand. “But I do want to talk to you in the study when you’ve put the children to bed.”
Chelsea and Henry fell back onto the comforter in a mixture of relief and disappointment.
“Goody gum drops, we get to finish the story,” Henry said.
“Daddy, I really do want to give you a goodnight kiss,” Chelsea said.
But Dean Radcliffe was already halfway down the hall to his study, followed by the ponderously slow but very loyal Wiley.
Ten minutes later, she went downstairs to the study with a tray piled high with two hot dogs, chips and the salad she had made earlier in the evening.
The steak was burnt beyond recognition and the baked potato shriveled like a piece of wadded-up paper. The martini pitcher was already washed, dried and put away in the bar armoire. Besides, she didn’t want to remind him of the promise he had made—and broken.
“Susan, please sit down,” Dean said as she came into the room. He looked at her with the wary but gracious expectancy he no doubt gave to all business associates, secretaries and clerks. “How kind of you to bring me dinner. I could have made something for myself.”
“Actually, I just made a little more of what I made the kids,” Susan said, conceding nothing about her hopes and dreams and efforts. She put the tray down on the only corner of the desk not covered with papers, and sat on the edge of one of the leather wing chairs opposite him. “You didn’t eat yet?”
“No, I guess I didn’t,” he said. “I was too busy working out the details on the Eastman Toy deal. There’s a lot of money riding on it.”
He reached for a hot dog.
“How is it you always guess correctly the nights I don’t have a business dinner and the ones when I’m able to come home in time for dinner?”
“Just intuition, I guess,” she said. She didn’t add that appearing at nine o’clock was hardly coming home in time for dinner.
She slipped Wiley a dog biscuit from her jeans pocket.
“I’m sorry about your birthday,” he said stiffly, clearly not very practiced in apologies.
“It’s all right,” Susan said, shrugging.
“I wanted to talk to you about the children,” Dean continued, showing his relief that she was understanding, that she knew her place in the household. “Tell me about how they’re doing.”
Susan swallowed the dryness in her mouth. She wondered if she was turning red—she did that when she was nervous. It was always this way with him, being around him. He made her excited and anxious and delighted all at the same time.
It was a crush. Just a stupid crush.
A crush she had rationalized and dissected and fought against so long and finally surrendered to so that it was now just a part of her personality, like her soft spot for children, weakness for chocolate and love of Audrey Hepburn movies.
Having a crush meant that whenever he was near, she noticed everything about him. Whether he was tired, whether he was sad. If he needed a haircut, if he was happy about some business deal.
She even noticed that he didn’t notice her.
So she could have her dry mouth, could shake with the jitters, could feel her excitement, her face could have a bright crimson blush—and she never had to worry that he would embarrass her by even suspecting that he was the object of her adoration.
All he wanted was an update on the kids. All she wanted was the chance to be near him.
“Baby Edward pointed to the picture of a brachiosaurus in a book this morning and he could sort of say the name of it,” she reported. “And Chelsea won the second-grade calla tournament today. She’s very proud of her—”
“What’s calla?”
“It’s a board game. Uses numbers and counting. The second graders have been playing it.”
“Strategy?”
“Yes, it uses strategy. Sort of like checkers.”
“Good. Chelsea’s got a good head for scoping out the competition.”
Actually, Susan just thought Chelsea was a bright, sweet little girl who had played a lot of calla games with her friends.
“Henry’s teacher told me when I picked him up that he’s doing much better with sounding out blends. And he got invited to Michael’s house for a play date this afternoon.”
“Excellent. He must begin making those vital connections.”
“You mean friendships?”
“Yes, of course, friendships.”
As Susan continued the update of domestic events, she was amazed again at how, even as busy, as distant as he was, Dean Radcliffe knew every detail of his children’s life. He puzzled over Henry’s phonics problems, asked about whether Chelsea’s best friend, Martina, had recovered from chicken pox and reminded Susan that all three were due for their six-month dental visit.
On the other hand, maybe he was the kind of businessman who remembered the birthdays of his clients’ secretaries and sent gifts to trusted employees at Christmas.
He certainly was that way with the children.
“Susan, I’ll have my secretary get Edward a T-shirt with a brachiosaurus,” Dean said. “Sort of a congratulations-on-learning-your-dinosaurs gift.”
Susan nodded, although she didn’t like it when Dean counted on Mrs. Witherspoon to pick up things for the children. Maybe Dean should consider telling Baby Edward himself that he was proud—but it wasn’t her place to make suggestions.
“Will that be all?” she asked.
