Page 31 of Marrying the Nanny

The kettle had enough water in it when she lifted it off the crate by the outlet that she just touched the lever to start it and set it down again.

Reid leaned his hips against the sink and scanned the spots where his brothers had finished pulling out the cabinets. They had sanded and prepped the walls for paint before heading to bed.

“What kind of place did you grow up in?” he asked.

“What do you mean? I’m from New Zealand. Nelson. It’s on the northern tip of the South Island. Fifty thousand people or so. It’s pretty. Artsy and academic.” Sometimes cliquey, but so was Raven’s Cove in its way. “My dad loves to sail so we were part of the yacht club.”

“You like to sail?”

“I’m a fair-weather boater. It’s a nice way to spend the day.”

“What do your parents do?”

She didn’t flatter herself that he was genuinely interested. He was being polite, maybe trying to keep himself awake. Good luck. Her most interesting accomplishment was being the most boring member of her family.

“Dad’s a civil engineer. His company gets a lot of the city contracts. My brother works there. He’ll likely take over when Dad retires. I never had the math or the interest.” She liked to point that out, even though she’d never had much of a shot, either. Even less now. “Mum teaches at the girls’ school.”

“An all-girls’ school? With the uniform and everything? Did you go there?”

“I did.” Co-ed schools seemed the norm here in Canada.

“Hmph.” His expression shifted slightly, eyelids heavy. Maybe amusement, maybe something else.

Whatever it was, it made her self-conscious of the fact she hadn’t pulled a robe over her waffle-knit top and baggy flannel pajama bottoms.

“Where did you go to school?” she asked.

“Up the hill.” He jerked his chin toward the window. “Then in Bella Bella.”

“Of course.” She felt stupid. “It’s so small, I forget it’s there.”

“You and everyone else,” he said dryly. “Coming from the city, I hated it with a passion. Looking back, I see it had its advantages. It was more like private tutoring, and there was no room for bullying or any other b.s. If you wanted the lesson to move along to something more interesting, you helped the kid who wasn’t getting it. If you wanted to field a baseball game, you had to ask everyone to play. It makes for quaint stories when the topic comes up at a cocktail party,” he added with a self-deprecating smile.

“I’m charmed.” It was the sort of light banter she would have tossed out at a cocktail party. She didn’t mean anything by it, but she wound up feeling like he thought she might actually be charmed.

Because, deep down, she was.

She turned away to drop a tea bag into a cup, swallowing back a self-conscious lump in her throat. She found him attractive. So what? All three Fraser brothers looked like they had stepped out of a firefighter calendar.

She didn’t get all prickly and aware when the other two tromped around the house, though. She knew they were there, of course. They intimidated the hell out of her, especially because they held her future in the palm of their big, indifferent hands.

But she didn’t perk up in the same way when Trystan or Logan came into a room. She was watchful around them, but with Reid, she was watching. Waiting for a reaction of some kind. It was similar to an adolescent crush, but more visceral.

She didn’t understand it. Her libido wasn’t something she had ever been close friends with. She had always wished she saw more of it, but hers was elusive, never living up to the hype. To her, sexual attraction was like the Moa, or that mythical creature some of the locals pretended roamed the woods here—the Sasquatch. There’d been sightings of her sex drive over the years, but they were blurry and she was skeptical it really existed.

Yet here it was after all, with its primitive feet firmly rooted inside her. Her inner Australopithecus was excited by the man with the deepest voice and widest shoulders and firmest grasp over their environment. The one holding a baby with such ham-fisted care.

Take me to your cave. Let me give you cubs.

“You have just the one brother?” he asked.

“Yes.” She looked at her nails, deflecting with, “I miss his kids. I used to take them on the weekends, but they’re five and eight now. Busy with school and sports and dance.” Also she wasn’t speaking to the dickhead.

“Were you a nanny at home? Or…?”

“Real estate agent. I wanted a fresh start after my divorce.”

“Oh.” That took him aback. He gave her a little once-over. The kind she’d seen other men do, looking for the flaw. “How long were you married?”

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