Page 41 of Temptation at His Door

“It’s dangerous.”

“So is driving a car or flying an airplane or riding a motorbike,” Joa pointed out, dipping her paintbrush into gray paint to color Aron’s mask.

“Our friend Levi just broke his leg dirt bike riding,” Ronan stated.

“Accidents happen.” Joa shrugged. “And it is his life.”

Ronan stared down at Sam’s mask, his fingers tightening on the paper plate. “I can’t lose anyone else. It would kill me, Ju.”

“Is that why you don’t date, why you refuse to look for love again?” Joa quietly asked.

“Yeah, it’s a big part of it.”

“What’s the rest of it?” Joa asked, her hand shaky as she painted the mask.

“I’m still in love with my wife.”

That wasn’t news. Joa forced herself to look up into his eyes and was startled at the maelstrom of pain, confusion and irritation she saw in those deep green-blue depths.

Joa wanted to hug all his pain away. She felt herself leaning into him and then remembered she wasn’t doing this again, she wasn’t going to fall into his life and pretend it was hers.

It wasn’t and it never could be.

“Learning to live again is hard, Ju.”

Joa couldn’t resist. She turned, rested her forehead on his shoulder and placed her hand on his hard thigh. The muscles under her palm flexed, tightened, but she didn’t react.

What could she say? She was the very last person in the world qualified to give advice.

Ten

With ample warning that Joa had an important meeting at Isabel’s foundation—a discussion with the board to look over the résumés for the new CEO of the organization—Ronan had asked Tanna, his sister, to collect the boys from school. It felt strange to have the afternoon off and to drive back to the house without the chattering boys in the car.

But the silence did give Joa time to think.

The candidates for the CEO position were, like the candidates for Ronan’s nanny, just not right. Oh, they were all very qualified and very slick, but none of them possessed the amount of enthusiasm Joa felt was needed to run Isabel’s beloved organization.

Like so many of the au pairs she’d interviewed, she felt they were all there for the paycheck.

For the boys, she wanted a nanny who would get down and dirty, who’d paint and play and talk to Sam and Aron, someone who’d interact on their level. For the CEO, she wanted someone who cared less about the glitzy benefits of the fund-raising parties and more about the people she, or he, would be ultimately helping. She wanted someone who would paint a room and serve food in a shelter, who’d stack books in a library, who’d visit the disaster-ravaged areas they funded. Good help, Joa was coming to realize, was very hard to find.

She whipped into the driveway to Ronan’s house, noticing an unfamiliar car parked in her space. Pulling off to the side, she hurried up the steps, slipping her key into the lock and stepping into the warm hall. Calling out a hello, she dumped her coat and bag on the hall table, and walked into the hallway to see Tanna standing by the window of the great room. Ronan’s half-sister was tiny compared to her big, burly brothers, and, like Joa, was a complicated mix of different cultures.

“Hey, Tanna. Sorry I’m late.”

Tanna turned and smiled. “No worries. I took the afternoon off and I love spending time with the mini-monsters.”

“Where are they?”

Tanna used her coffee cup to gesture to the garden outside, still covered with snow. Joa saw the boys crouched by a rock formation, fascinated by whatever an older woman was telling them.

Joa frowned. “Who is that?”

“Abigail Houseman,” Tanna replied. “She said she had an interview with you about the nanny position?”

Joa thought for a minute and then winced. “Damn, I totally forgot about her.”

She’d made the appointment weeks ago, when she first came to help Ronan out. Abigail, she now remembered, had been on a walking tour in Scotland and could only be interviewed when she returned. They’d agreed that if Joa found someone suitable, she’d email Abigail to cancel the appointment.

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