Pining For You (Jasper Falls 4)

“Well, thank you for a great first day. We’ll expect you at the same time tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here.”

He watched as she bundled up, and she wondered what sort of thoughts he hid in the wide-open silence. It would be less awkward once she moved in and could just slip away to her room to avoid these strange moments that sort of made her feel like an exhibit at the zoo. Did he always stare so much?

It had been a long day and she’d hardly slept the night before. Typically, when she finished a shift, she liked to zone out and forget about work, but she thought about the Buchanans the entire drive home—especially her boss.

The strange thing about Rhett Buchanan was his ability to put others at ease. He’d redeveloped their forgotten town into a storybook village, complete with all the bells and whistles. Yet, in his own home, he seemed completely at odds. Personal accents and assets remained tightly packaged and tagged, as if he never truly settled in.

The mansion was cold because it was simply a house. It boggled her mind that a man who could transform their entire town couldn’t turn his own house into a home.

They didn’t have any Christmas decorations or personal photographs sitting around, and some of the rooms, like hers, looked completely untouched. She questioned if tonight was the first time they actually sat down for a meal in the dining room.

As she navigated the snowy roads home, she considered all of these things. And while she’d taken the job to take care of a little girl, she decided it wouldn’t do any harm to go a little further, and take care of Addison’s father as well.

7

Rhett glanced at his watch as Erin continued to review her notes from today’s meeting with the school board. She’d been droning on and on about the gymnasium renovation at the middle school for nearly an hour.

“I think we have everything,” he interrupted, earning a confused stare from his assistant.

“You still have to vote on the—”

“Just say yes.”

“Rhett, this is a big deal—”

“It’s for the kids, Erin. The town can afford it.” He didn’t mean to rush the decision, but he wanted to get home. Lately, he’d been anxious to return to his house and discover what awaited him.

Last night, the girls baked a blueberry cobbler from scratch. It was still hot from the oven when Skylar topped it with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

His mouth watered even now as he recalled the way her auburn hair fell over her shoulder. When she tucked it behind her ear, she got a smudge of caramel filling on her cheek. That little smear distracted him for twenty solid minutes, until he finally had to tell her so she’d wipe it off.

She blushed and used her fingers to smudge it away. Then she sucked the tip of her finger into her mouth and laughed. Such a simple, natural motion, yet it unraveled him.

He was a total cliché, lusting for the nanny, but he couldn’t help it. At first, because of her age, he expected a certain level of maturity. But that wasn’t the case. If anything, Skylar was more mature than women his own age.

Then, because she was a teacher and into things like popsicle stick crafts and tissue paper collages, he hoped she’d be a little too corny, in a sort of well-intentioned, dorky way, but maybe he was the dork because he found every project she and Addy created absolutely fascinating.

Skylar was so damn clever and creative. She made a butterfly out of a coffee filter, some Smarties, and a clothespin. This couldn’t be the stuff they taught in college. She had a use for everything.

Her age wasn’t repellant, because no matter how he did the math she was a legal, adult woman. And her personality wasn’t stopping his mind from playing a non-stop game of strip the nanny in his head. And her cooking, well hell, every time he tasted her food he wanted to taste all of her.

Last night he had a full blown fantasy about taking a swipe of that caramel filling on his own fingers and feeding them slowly into her hot little mouth. He wanted to leave her nipples sticky and wet and kiss his way right down to the hot apple pie between Skylar’s legs.

He was so fucked.

It hadn’t even been a week. How the hell would he put up with her proximity long term. And he couldn’t mess this up, because she was seriously the best governess Addy ever had.

Besides, who was to say she’d be interested in him? She was too pretty, too smart, and too damn sweet. He kept waiting for her to do something immoral, something a little shitty that proved she wasn’t perfect, and she almost did.