“Daniel says I’d be stupid not to jump on you.” Dead air followed his statement. As if the call had dropped, or he was holding his breath.
Yes, please, jump on me. But she wouldn’t mess this up. Especially when the words didn’t have a double meaning for him—it was just her one-sided sparks going off again.
“I’d be honored to take care of Noah. Would Sunday evening be okay to start so that I’d be there to get Noah ready for school in the morning?”
“Good idea. We can slip you right into the routine. Can you make it by dinnertime?”
“Depends on what you’re serving.”
She made the joke before thinking, but thankfully Matt laughed and said, “Tell me what your favorite is.”
Her favorite would be licking Rocky Road ice cream off him. A wave of heat rolled through her, and her legs moved restlessly as she tried not to breathe heavily.
“As long as it’s not SpaghettiOs or chicken nuggets, I’m good.” She said it with a laugh, but all joking aside, those had been her diet staples as a kid.
“There’s not a single SpaghettiO or chicken nugget in the house.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”
Once they’d hung up, she relived the conversation like the silly teenager she’d never been, weaving it into a crazy, sweet fantasy. Come Sunday, she’d be nothing but professional.
But tonight, she would let herself dream…
Chapter Three
Seated beside Ari at the dinner table on Sunday evening, Matt realized just how exquisite torture could get.
“This is definitely not SpaghettiOs,” she said with a laugh as she sliced into the moist salmon filet.
“What’s spaghetto?” Noah asked.
Matt dragged himself back onto the same spatial plane as his son, feeling yet another kick of guilt at his overtly sensual thoughts. The three of them were seated in the dinner nook, an annex off the kitchen with a swing door between. The formal dining room could seat thirty-six, but he used it only for holidays and business parties.
Ari was the first nanny who’d wanted to join them for dinner. The others preferred the hour off from their duties.
“SpaghettiOs are little round Os of pasta and sauce in a can,” she explained.
“Can I have some spaghettos?” Noah’s speech was exceptional for his age, with no childish lisp even on difficult letters, but he couldn’t seem to wrap his tongue around the word.
Matt sure didn’t plan on eating canned spaghetti. He’d left that kind of food behind when he’d gotten the hell out of the rough part of Chicago. Ari had left it behind too. But SpaghettiOs and chicken nuggets said a lot about where she’d grown up. The same kind of place he had. He could only hope it was nowhere near as bad.
“Well,” Ari said, scooping up more broccoli, salmon, and rice pilaf. “Spaghetti is a lot better with homemade sauce that has good things in it like bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions.”
Noah screwed up his face. “Onions are yucky.”
Ari dropped her jaw, and her pretty hazel eyes went wide. Matt was as caught by the slashes of topaz in the depths of her irises as he was by her scent, something light and floral.
She shook her head in amazement. “Onions make everything taste better. And garlic.”
“Ewww.” Noah wrinkled his nose with disgust.
“Don’t you like pizza?”
He nodded. “Cookie makes pizza the best.”
“Our cook,” Matt explained. “She’s Russian with a pretty complicated-sounding last name. So she asked us to call her Cookie.”
Giving Matt a little smile of thanks for the explanation, Ari turned back to Noah. “I bet Cookie puts onions and garlic in her pizza sauce.”
“Really?” Noah raised his eyebrow in a gesture that should have been too old for a five-year-old boy to pull off. But he was rather advanced, if Matt said so himself.
“Yep. Now you better finish your yummy salmon. Because it’s so good.” She forked another bite, savoring it with a purr. “Eat up.”
While Matt could barely keep his libido under control from just sitting at the same table with her, Noah did as he was told, making yum-yum sounds the way she had.
When Ari laughed, delight sparkling in her eyes, Matt knew he’d been an idiot to think he had things under control. It didn’t matter that she was sweet and innocent and ten years younger than he. His thoughts weren’t brotherly, fatherly, or even boss-y. Everything she said captivated him and mesmerized him, as easily as she charmed Noah.
Desperate to get his mind off her charms, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a new smartphone, setting it by her plate. “I’d like you to use this.” When she didn’t immediately reach for it, he added, “You said you can’t get texts on your phone, but if I’m in a meeting where I can text but not talk, I need to be able to get hold of you when, where, and however I can.”