Page 18 of Temptation at His Door

Five

Joa was pretty sure that at one time, Ronan’s house in West Roxbury had been a designer showcase. His low-slung couches and carefully chosen furniture screamed Nordic minimalism, the bold art giving the eyes a break from the very white double-volume walls.

Joa stood in the great room off the hall—a long and wide room that held a sitting room on one side and a well-designed kitchen on the other with a huge island and a white wood dining table splitting the two spaces—and the huge windows provided views of what was once a landscaped but was now a neglected and denuded garden. Joa wrapped her arms around her body and turned in a slow circle in the huge room. Sadness could sometimes be a tangible thing.

Joa’s throat tightened at the image of Ronan’s stunning wife in a silver frame on the dusty surface of the Steinway piano. She was cuddling her toddler—Sam?—her huge stomach telling the world that she was about to birth another child, her wide smile tender and her eyes full of happiness.

This was still her house, in so many ways. There was a massive portrait of her immediately catching attention as one stepped into the hall. There was a wedding photograph of her and Ronan on the hall table. A Hermes scarf, pink and gray, hung off the coatrack, as well as a gray felt hat adorned with scarlet flowers.

To Joa, it felt like Thandi had stepped out to run an errand, or that she was upstairs. This was still, in every way that counted, her house.

But there were hints of Ronan, too: a tie on the granite counter, cell phone chargers, a shopping list in what had to be his scrawl on the fridge. And, of course, signs that kids lived here. There was a small shoe under the leather sofa, a green glove on the floor, die-cast metal cars on the Persian carpet.

A massive train set crisscrossed the corner of the room and toys of all description were tossed into boxes, into corners, piled up on chairs.

Yep, this house was chaos. Yet she still preferred chaos to clinical sterility.

Joa turned at the sound of footsteps and her breath caught when Ronan strode into the room, pulling a small suitcase with a laptop bag resting on top. He’d changed into a light gray suit, a pale mint green shirt underneath the designer jacket.

Stepping into the great room, Ronan glanced at his watch and grimaced. “We have so much to talk about and minimal time.”

Joa perched on the arm of one of his long and wide sofas. She crossed her legs and linked her hands around her knee. “On a scale of one to ten, how upset are your boys going to be having a stranger look after them?”

Ronan rubbed the back of his neck and Joa saw the worry in his green-gold-blue eyes. “I’m hoping they’ll be fine and they’ll feel better if we pick them up from school together. Sam is stoic, he’s a mature kid, but Aron might get a bit weepy.”

Ronan walked across the room to the double-door fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. He waved it in Joa’s direction. “Still or sparkling?”

“Sparkling.” Joa joined him at the granite center island and slid onto a barstool, perfectly content to watch the tall, rangy, ripped-as-hell Ronan move around his messy kitchen. God, she was so attracted to him. Really, what warm-blooded woman wouldn’t be? Thank God she was only going to be his nanny for two nights; more would be impossible.

Joa refused to put herself in the position of having and losing a family again. It hurt too damn much.

It was like putting yourself into a story where you didn’t belong, singing a hymn when you should be chanting, painting with oils when you should be sketching with pencils.

She had money, she had time, she had choices. She had so much more than she, a child from the wrong side of the tracks, had ever expected. She owed it to Isabel, to herself, to find her niche, to write her own story, her own song, to live her own life instead of hijacking someone else’s.

She was helping Ronan out; she would be out of his life within forty-eight hours, and then he would just be a memory. It didn’t matter that she was brutally attracted to him and he kissed like a dream; she was not going to allow herself to indulge in the smallest fantasies around him.

She was all about reality now...

Ronan picked up her water bottle and dashed the liquid into a glass before pushing it across the granite surface in her direction. “We need to leave in fifteen minutes, so let’s use that time to go over the ground rules.”

“Sure.”

Thankful for his businesslike tone, Joa listened as he ran through his dos and don’ts, all of which were pretty standard. Then Ronan pointed to a round light in the ceiling. “I have cameras everywhere so I can see what’s going on. All the time.”

Joa narrowed her eyes. “Define everywhere? My bedroom, my bathroom?” And that reminded her... “Where am I sleeping, by the way?”

Ronan pushed his hand through his hair. “The boys share a room on the top floor, next to mine. But the guest suite is a floor down. The nanny usually stays there.”

Joa shook her head. “I won’t hear them if there’s a problem.”

Ronan took a long sip of his water. “There’s an iPad next to your bed. Switch it on and you can see and hear what they are up to. If the boys are upstairs and you are down here, you can carry the iPad and check up on them.”

Handy in a place as big as this but he didn’t answer her question. “Do my bed and bathroom contain cameras?”

“No, of course not.”

Ronan drained his glass and picked up her half-full glass and took them through to what she assumed was a utility room. “We need to go.” Ronan told her when he returned, looking reluctant.

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