“Well, stop wondering. I’m in your house to be a nanny, not to assuage your curiosity.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Assuage?”
“Yes, got a problem with it?”
“Not at all. It’s just that I figured since you worked with kids—”
“I’d talk like a toddler?” she asked.
He shook his head. She rattled him and made his legendary charm disappear. It was unnerving and at the same time exciting. She was still different from every other woman he’d ever known.
“My curiosity still needs to be assuaged.”
She shook her head and lifted the cloche off the plate in front of her. “I have to get to my meeting, so let’s eat.”
“Don’t like talking about kissing me?” he asked.
He took his lid off as well and saw that Mrs. Tillman had prepared fish tacos. His favorite. Gabi took a bite and chewed carefully.
Hell, he needed to kiss her and take her to his bed. Get over this odd infatuation he had with her. What else could he call watching her chew and thinking it was cute?
He took a bite of his taco, glad as hell that Hunter had gone to Malibu for a few weeks. He didn’t want his friend to see him mooning over Gabi.
Was that what he was doing?
“So, while you are gone, is it okay to ask your housekeeper to watch Conner if I need to have a conference call?” she asked. “I will do my writing and paperwork either while Conner is having his nap or at night while he’s sleeping. But I’m in the middle of placing two nannies with some rather high-profile clients and I don’t want to lose their business.”
“Yes, that will be fine. She’s not interested in being a full-time nanny but will help out as needed.”
“Great. Now, when will you be back?”
“In a week. Do you feel like you can handle Conner?”
“Certainly. He seems pretty well adjusted. You’ve done a good job with raising him,” she said.
“I had some excellent advice,” he said. “I bought your book.”
She shook her head. “Lots of people have bought my book and still have kids that are out of control. You seem to actually listen to him, which is key.”
“Well, I like my son,” Kingsley said.
“That’s a good thing.”
“I like you, too,” he said.
“Don’t. We have a business relationship.”
“I know that. But what’s to preclude us from having more?”
“Common sense,” she said.
* * *
Maybe it was being back in Cali or just being around Gabi, but he felt young again. Free in a way he hadn’t been since their one night together. She made him want to be the man who had dreams. Not the man who was focused on vengeance.
But the dreamer was gone. And he was a taker now.
He wanted Gabi.
She kept him at arm’s length, which was one thing he wasn’t going to allow. She was part of the reason he was here. Not just revenge.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. But now that she was under his roof, his focus was changing. He still craved revenge on whoever had set Hunter and him up, but he also desperately wanted Gabi.
It was her fault.
She sat across from him in the midday California sun, watching him as though she wanted more, too.
Maybe she’d been waiting, too. Waiting for him to come back into her life.
Yeah, right.
Hell.
What if she was involved with someone? Why wouldn’t she be?
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked. “Is that why you are busy espousing common sense?”
She shook her head. “So the only reason a woman wouldn’t want to throw away her professionalism with you is because she’s involved with someone else?”
“This feels like a trap,” he said. “I just wanted to know if there was a man in your life.”
“There are a lot of them,” she said.
That didn’t fit with the woman he thought he knew. But then he had to admit that reading her column and her book didn’t give him any special insight into her personal life.
“Fair enough.”
She laughed in a very kind way. It was something he hadn’t heard in a long time. Women didn’t usually laugh around him.
“What?”
“You are so transparent.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“What do you see?” he asked her. He had the feeling she was toying with him and that feeling of being free took him again. It had been a long time since anyone had teased him.