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  She nodded. “Ah,” she said, feeling a jumpy sensation at the sensual glint in his eyes. How would it feel to spend an evening receiving the undivided attention of a man like Nicholas Barone? Gail would no doubt spend the entire date stammering and blushing, unlike the confident, gorgeous women he was accustomed to. She wondered who it was tonight. “You must have a tough time choosing the ‘flavor of the day.’ I don’t remember meeting a woman who doesn’t love ice cream, so you must represent the perfect combination.”

  “What would that be?” he asked. “Wealth and…”

  She shook her head. “Actually I wasn’t thinking of wealth. I was thinking of ice cream and a favorite topping. Something hot,” she said impulsively, because if ever the word was an apt description for a man, it was now. “Hot fudge sauce.”

  As Nicholas stared at her for a long moment, she felt a roar of embarrassment race through her. What had possessed her to say such a thing? Thinking it was one thing. Saying it was something totally different. She cringed, certain her cheeks matched the color of her hair. Was she destined to constantly embarrass herself in front of this man? “Could we just forget I said that?”

  “Forget you just compared me to ice cream and hot fudge sauce?” he asked, his dark eyebrows arching.

  “Uh, yeah,” she said hopefully.

  He shook his head and chuckled. “No. I’m sure I’ll remember that for a long time.”

  And Gail made the futile wish that she could fall through a crack in the perfectly sealed tile floor of the foyer so her five-foot-eight-inch frame would disappear.

  Two

  After the last two busy days, Gail should have been comatose. Instead, she stared wide-eyed at the eight-foot ceiling of her elegant bedroom. Molly, the precious screaming meemie, had finally fallen asleep an hour ago. Caring for an uneasy, clingy one-year-old was both rewarding and exhausting. On those rare occasions when Molly smiled, it was as if the sun came out from behind a cloud.

  Gail felt as if she was making progress with her little charge, but she worried about Molly and Nicholas. She had tried without success to encourage Nicholas to spend time with his daughter. He made overtures, but when Molly began to cry, and she always did, he backed away. Gail worried about how to bring the two of them together. If Molly continued to cry and Nicholas continued to pull away, she feared they would never develop the warm, loving relationship they both could have.

  The warm, loving relationship Gail would have had with her father if he had lived. The memory of her father’s death stirred a pang of longing to which Gail thought she’d become immune.

  Abandoning her effort to sleep, she rose from the bed and pulled on her robe. She yawned, scooted her feet into her pink bunny slippers and headed for the kitchen for a cup of something hot without caffeine. As she passed Molly’s room, she noticed the door was slightly ajar.

  Curious, she quietly pushed the door open and spotted Nicholas standing next to Molly’s crib. Dressed in a black wool suit that had taken him from early-morning meetings to another charity function this evening, he had loosened his tie and was totally focused on the sight of his sleeping daughter.

  The grave tenderness on his face made Gail’s heart twist. “Gotcha,” she whispered.

  For a moment she wondered if he’d heard her. But then he turned to meet her gaze and his mouth lifted in a slow half smile. “So you did.”

  Gail felt the punch of attraction all over again, but refused to let the man’s sex appeal cloud her mind. “She’s not crying,” she said, moving closer to the crib.

  “She doesn’t know I’m here,” Nicholas said dryly. “Otherwise, she’d be screaming her lungs out.”

  “Babies cry to expend energy. It’s not personal,” she said, and hoped it was true.

  “Uh-huh.” His deep voice was full of doubt as he returned his gaze to Molly.

  “Well, it’s true. It’s not as if babies can play tennis or volleyball to work off their frustration.”

  “And there’s no correlation to her crying every time I come around. It has absolutely nothing to do with my presence.”

  Gail wanted to say it didn’t, but she feared her nose would grow like Pinocchio’s. “Well, it wouldn’t,” she insisted, “if you would spend more time with her when she’s awake.”

  “Her little life’s been turned inside out lately. I don’t want to upset her more, so I come every night and watch her. Maybe she’ll get used to me through osmosis or something.”

  The combination of his wry tenderness and strength struck at Gail’s heart. “Maybe you could sing to her.”

  He shot her a dark look.

  “Just seems like there should be a way to make some progress,” she said, wrinkling her brow as she searched for a solution. “Maybe you could leave something of yours in her crib. Something you wear next to your skin. Something with your scent.”

  “My socks?” he said.

  She chuckled. “No. The objective is to help her bond with you, not chase her away. Maybe your T-shirt,” she ventured.

  He stood perfectly still for a long moment, then gave a short nod. “Okay,” he said, and shrugged out of his jacket and began to unbutton his shirt. He thrust his jacket at her. “Here. Hold this.”

  Gail instinctively clutched his jacket and felt her jaw fall open in shock. “Uh, you, uh, don’t have to—” She broke off as he handed her his shirt and in one motion yanked off his T-shirt. Her gaze fastened on the breathtaking, thigh-melting view of his muscular bare chest. A dusting of dark hair skimmed down the center of his chest and abdomen and disappeared beneath the waistband of his black slacks. He carefully set his T-shirt beside Molly in the crib, his muscles rippling with the movement.

  He turned back to face her. “Any other suggestions?”

  None that wouldn’t send her into cardiac arrest, Gail thought. She cleared her throat. “You’ll get an opportunity to be alone with her when she’s awake tomorrow night.”

  Alarm crossing his face, he did a double take. “Tomorrow night!” Molly stirred, and he lowered his voice, moving closer to Gail. “You’re not quitting already, are you?”

  “Of course not,” she whispered. “I have tomorrow night off. I have a volleyball game.”

  He frowned, running his hand through his hair. “I don’t know if this is a good idea. Maybe I should call a sitter.”

  “It requires guts and tenacity. I thought you Barones cornered the market when it came to guts and tenacity.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “What do I do with her?”

  Gail’s heart swelled with a combination of admiration and compassion. Nicholas Barone was an incredibly powerful man, but he was willing to go to the mat for the daughter he hadn’t even known existed just weeks ago. “Read to her. Pay attention to her. Women are the same at any age. They love attention. They love to be chased. They love to laugh,” she said, and noticed he was standing so close to her she could see the five-o’clock shadow on his jaw. She felt suddenly light-headed.

  “Women are the same at any age,” he echoed, his curious gaze winding around her like a silken thread. “So what does Gail want? To be chased and to laugh?”

  She had to be imagining the intensity in his gaze, because he sure as heck could not be looking at her the way a man looks at a woman he finds desirable. Dropping her gaze to clear her head, she stared at her feet and his. He wore Italian leather shoes. She wore pink bunny slippers. She backed away. “Gail wants a cup of herbal tea. I’ll let you get back to your secret quality time with your daughter. Don’t worry about tomorrow night. I’ll leave her favorite books out for you, and if that doesn’t work, you can always make up a story.”

  He gave her a blank look. “Make up a story about what?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sure you’re creative,” she said, and the naughty thought sliced through her mind that he was probably very creative in bed. Before her mouth decided to share that thought, she took another step backward. “Good night, Nicholas.”
r />   He nodded. “Gail,” he said as she turned.

  She stopped. “Yes?”

  “Great slippers.”

  Her cheeks heated at the sexy amusement in his voice. His voice was so sexy he could probably read the Wall Street Journal and a woman would beg him to bed her. Gail bit back a moan. She definitely needed to make sure she didn’t run into Nicholas late at night again. A woman needed all her faculties and fortitude to fight off that man’s impact.

  The following night Gail played volleyball with her co-ed team. She’d been so immersed in her new nanny position that she had a tough time concentrating at first. Her longtime buddy and teammate, Jonathan, had teased her out of her fog. After the game and a quick shower at the gym, she joined her comrades for a celebratory round of beer at a local bar. Her mind kept wandering to Molly and Nicholas. Visions of Molly, red-faced and crying, and Nicholas, discouraged and exasperated, plagued her, so she left early.

  When she entered through the heavy wooden front door, she listened for sounds of screaming. Instead, she heard Nicholas’s low baritone coming from the kitchen. Quietly walking down the hallway, she noticed his words were punctuated by pleasant gurgling noises from Molly. Pleasant? Gail silently mouthed the word wow and stood outside the kitchen.

  “You like Baronessa strawberry gelato,” Nicholas said. “You have excellent taste. Would you like to hear how Baronessa Gelati was started?”

  Molly gave an unintelligible babble, but once again, it was pleasant sounding.

  “I knew you’d be interested. Your great-grandfather Marco came to America from Italy and he fell in love with a girl named Angelica who made ice-cream desserts. The two of them eloped on Valentine’s Day and they later opened a gelateria, which is an Italian ice-cream store. Can you say gelateria?”

  Another unintelligible babble followed, and Gail smiled, charmed by Nicholas’s ridiculous question.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m sure my father will make sure you speak some Italian. But back to the story. Marco named the gelateria Baronessa because their last name—our last name—means baron in English. As his wife, she was the baronessa. The gelateria became very popular with locals and tourists. It was a huge success. Years passed, and my father, Carlo, who earned his MBA from Harvard, took the business national, and Baronessa Gelati can now be found in the gourmet section of grocery stores all over the world.” He paused. “Baronessa strawberry gelato can also be found all over you, little one. It looks like you’re going to need another bath, and something tells me that won’t be nearly as popular as strawberry gelato.”

  Gail poked her head through the doorway. “Looks like you two have been having a party.”

  Nicholas heard Molly shriek with joy and felt a rush of relief at the sight of Gail. Molly had been fretful for a good part of the evening. Serving her gelato had been an act of inspiration and desperation.

  Gail smiled, and he felt an odd trickle of warmth in his gut. “I’m impressed,” she said. “It would have taken me a while to come up with ice cream.”

  “But you probably would have managed to keep it neater,” he said, nodding his head at the pink mess that was Molly.

  “No,” Gail said, grabbing a couple of paper towels and moving toward Molly’s high chair. “I just would have tried to get her cleaned up before you saw her so you would think I’d managed to feed her without her getting it all over herself.”

  “So the just-fed clean one-year-old is a myth?” he asked.

  Gail nodded. “If you think this is bad, you should see SpaghettiOs.”

  “You mean canned spaghetti?” he asked in horror.

  Gail winced and chuckled. “Oops. Have I just deeply offended your Italian sensibilities? Sorry, but round noodles are great toddler food.” She wiped off Molly’s face and the baby began to protest. Gail put the paper towel in front of Molly’s face and whipped it away. “Peekaboo,” she said, and Molly smiled, reaching for the towel.

  Nicholas envied Gail’s ease with his daughter. Although he had hired Gail for the sole purpose of caring for Molly, he still wished he didn’t feel so damned incompetent with his own daughter. As Gail lifted Molly from her high chair, he noticed ice cream on the front of the child’s pajamas. “Be careful,” he said. “She’ll get ice cream on you.”

  Gail looked down and shrugged. “No problem. I’m not prissy.”

  That she wasn’t. Nicholas was not accustomed to un-prissy women. He followed Gail up the steps, his gaze caught by the sway of her cute rear end in jeans. Remembering the sight of her bare bottom, he imagined her athletic frame naked. He suspected she would appear more toned than muscle-bound. Those thighs would wrap around a man—

  He bit back an oath. This was his daughter’s nanny, for Pete’s sake. And she wasn’t even his type. She was different from the perfectly coiffed women he dated. Her hair was wild. She couldn’t completely tame it even when she pulled it back. A forbidden, instinctive image of Gail naked, with her red hair flying free, her face full of ecstasy, stole into his mind.

  He frowned and bit back another oath. Maybe it had been too long since he’d taken a woman to bed. Although he’d continued to attend public events with beautiful women, he’d been too distracted about becoming a father to focus on his sexual needs.

  Nicholas ruthlessly pushed his disturbing thoughts aside as he joined Gail in the nursery bathroom. Gail turned the water on full force in the tub.

  “How was the game?”

  “Thank you for asking. We won, of course,” she said, a hint of competitiveness glinting in her eyes.

  “Of course,” he said. “Does that mean you never lose?”

  “You have to be careful with the words ‘never’ and ‘always,’” she said, starting to undress Molly. “But we’ve been undefeated for three years. It’s a co-ed team, and the guys don’t hesitate to blast the women when we’re not aggressive enough.”

  “And there’s no one guy who is significant to you?”

  “They’re all special,” she said, bending down to test the water, then place Molly in the tub. “But to them I’m just one of the guys.”

  “They can’t be that blind,” Nicholas said.

  She looked at him and smiled. “That was very nice, thank you. Speaking of significant others, what about you?”

  “Molly is the only significant female in my present and future,” he said, feeling a faint twist of bitterness when he thought of Molly’s mother.

  “But what about your romantic future? Surely there’s someone who could be special to you.”

  “Nothing long term,” Nicholas said. “I’m committed to keeping my relationships with women short term. I’m up-front about it, so there are no hard feelings.”

  Gail gave a snort of disbelief. “Yeah, right,” she said as she washed Molly’s belly.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said, oddly affronted by her response. “I’m completely clear about my intentions with a woman. No one is left wondering.”

  “Maybe not wondering, but hoping,” she said, and rinsed Molly.

  “Hoping for what?”

  “Hoping you’ll fall madly in love with her,” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Hard-earned cynicism cut through him. “I’ll never fall madly in love with a woman again. There’s no such thing as a happy ending.”

  Gail’s eyebrows knitted together as if she didn’t approve of his opinion but was holding her tongue. Nicholas suspected she found it difficult to hold her tongue when she had a strong opinion. She lifted Molly from the tub and wrapped her in a towel. In one smooth motion, she plopped his daughter in his arms. “I don’t know,” Gail mused aloud, glancing pointedly at Molly. “Looks to me like you got the winning hand this time.”

  Nicholas looked into the innocent wide eyes of his squirmy, damp daughter and felt his heart expand with protectiveness and love. He smiled at Molly. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  Later that week Gail met Nicholas in the kitchen as he pulled a bottle o
f water from the refrigerator. His afternoon had been jam-packed with meetings to solve production problems. He was so tense his neck muscles felt like rubber bands pulled taut.

  At her smile he felt the tension in him ease.

  “Welcome home. I hate to jump you as soon as you walk in the door.”

  His neck tightened again. “A problem?”

  “Not really,” she said, lifting a picture frame she’d held by her side. “I just have a special request. I need a photograph of you.”

  “Why?” he asked, taking a deep gulp of the water.

  “To put in Molly’s room. You’re gone all day, and I think it would be good if she has a constant visual reminder of you even when you’re not here.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Something informal would be best.”

  He nodded. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  “And I need you to record a message to her.”

  Nicholas looked at her in confusion. “Record a message?”

  “Sure,” she said, moving closer to him and handing him the frame. “I got this today. It’s so cool. We put your photo in the frame and record a message, then every time you push this button, you get to hear the message. Molly will love it.”

  The excitement in her voice amused and warmed him. “How do you know she won’t start crying every time she hears my voice?”

  Gail tossed him a sideways glance. “Because she’s already warming up to you. And it’s so easy. You can go ahead and record your message now.”

  “Now?” he said, drawing a complete blank. “What should I say?”

  “Anything. You can sing part of a song. You can read from one of her favorite books. Or you can just tell her how special she is and how much you love her.”

  The doorbell rang. Gail glanced at the clock. “Oh, that’ll be Jonathan. He’s a friend,” she said, answering his question before he voiced it. “He called and said he wanted to watch a basketball game with me. You said I could use the downstairs den in the evenings if I want to have friends over. Is that still okay?”