Maid for the Single Dad (3 page)

 

Ten minutes later, Mac knocked on her bedroom door and stepped inside, a clean and happy Henry on his arm.

Closing the closet door where she'd stowed her suitcase, Ellie faced him. “Ready for the tour?”

“Yes.” Mac led her out of her suite and to the right. He pointed at the door beside the nursery door. “This leads to my suite.”

“Okay.”

She didn't like the warmth that bubbled in her middle with the realization that their bedrooms were so close. Fear or apprehension wouldn't have surprised her. But anticipation? That was ridiculous and wrong. She'd sworn off men forever. The proximity of their bedrooms shouldn't matter. Plus, her suite had its own bathroom. She wouldn't be venturing into the hall in her nightclothes or wrapped in a towel before or after a shower—neither would he. She had nothing to fear and nothing to worry about—except maybe this crazy attraction which seemed to have a life of its own.

Mac opened the next door. With a motion of his hand he invited her to peek into the pink-and-white room. “And this is Lacy's room. Also close enough for you to hear her if something happens.”

Glad to have her mind moving off his master suite and to the kids, Ellie said, “Good.”

Walking again, they passed eye-popping red statues and etchings done in cocoa-brown ink. Behind a curving cherrywood staircase, a wall of windows displayed a panoramic view of the canal. Sharp, contemporary accent chairs with chrome arms and legs and nubby yellow fabric backs and seats sat by tall, thin chrome lamps. The floor was a warm honey-colored hardwood. Once again she thought of a museum.

“These two doors,” Mac said, pointing to the right and then the left, “lead to two guest suites.”

They turned a corner. Mac pointed at two doors on opposite sides of the hall. “Two more guest suites.”

“Of course.”

“I don't have guests often,” Mac continued, leading her down the hall. Over his shoulder, blue-eyed Henry grinned toothlessly at Ellie.

She smiled and waved.

“And won't be having any guests at all until I've hired a permanent maid.” He paused at a set of double doors. After shifting Henry on his forearm, he opened them, revealing a laundry room complete with a bright red washer and dryer, a folding table, carts, baskets and cherrywood cabinets that she assumed held laundry detergent and the like.

Smiling her professional household employee smile, Ellie said, “Okay.”

“You can easily gather everyone's laundry, wash it, dry it, press it in here and return it to the proper room.”

With that he closed the doors and directed her back down another hall.

“As you can see, we're making a full circle. These steps,” Mac said as they approached the set of back stairs, “are the same ones we used to get up here.”

They started down the wooden steps and at the bottom turned left to enter the kitchen.

“We have a very simple floor plan.”

Glancing around the kitchen, Ellie said, “Yes.”

“Okay, now for the first floor.”

Mac led her out of the kitchen, down a short hall and turned right into a room that had to be the playroom. The back wall held cherrywood bookcases and built-in cupboards, probably for storing toys, and a wide-screen TV. A thick brown-and-red print rug sat in the middle of the hardwood floor. Otherwise, the room was without furniture. Unless you counted the bright blue plastic table and chairs with accompanying yellow plastic dishes and
cups where Lacy sat—probably having an imaginary tea party—and the beige plastic stove, refrigerator and sink that Ellie recognized from her last trip to a toy store.

Looking up from her tea party, Lacy said, “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, sweetie. You remember Ellie.”

She nodded enthusiastically, her fine blond hair bobbed around her.

“Hi, Lacy. I like your playroom.”

Lacy only grinned and nodded again.

Mac walked over to his daughter, who tugged on his pant leg to get his attention.

“Daddy, I'm hungry.”

Though Lacy tried to whisper, her voice came out loud and clear.

“Okay.” Mac faced Ellie. “Can we finish our tour later?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

Mac said, “Great,” and headed for the doorway on the right. “Let's go make something for lunch.”

Lacy's face brightened as Ellie's stomach fell to the floor. She hadn't had time to get the cookbook yet! What would she do if Mac asked for something Ellie had no idea how to prepare?

Before she could panic Lacy said, “Can we have peanut butter sandwiches and ice cream?”

Walking into the hall, Mac laughed. “We'll negotiate the ice cream after you've eaten the sandwich.”

Still carrying Henry, Mac left the room with happy Lacy skipping behind him. Ellie took a minute to breathe a sigh of relief before she bounded out of the room. She caught up with them in the kitchen.

Sliding Henry into a highchair, Mac said, “Now that I think about it, Ellie, you could actually finish the tour of
the rest of the house by yourself. Dining room and living room are at the front of the house. Over there is the family room.” He pointed at the area beside the kitchen with the leather furniture and big-screen TV. “My office is above the garage, but there's no reason for you to go there.”

He straightened away from the highchair. “While I feed the kids, you can make a list of what needs to be done cleaningwise. Then when the children and I are done, you can clean the kitchen and get started with supper.”

“Okay.”

He smiled patiently. “Okay.”

Not exactly sure what happened with lunch and feeling oddly dismissed, Ellie turned and walked out of the kitchen. It wasn't that she had a burning need to make peanut butter sandwiches. She felt unnecessary. He'd insisted that she start today, yet she wasn't doing any of the things he'd hired her to do. No. He wouldn't
let
her do any of the things he'd hired her to do.

Her intuition tried to tell her that something was wrong with this situation, but she ignored it, as she intended to do for the rest of her stay here. After all, her intuition had already steered her wrong about taking this job. She wasn't letting it in on any more decision making.

And she certainly wasn't about to let it spark her imagination. That would only result in her becoming too curious about this man and his adorable children and asking some very inappropriate questions. Like what kind of woman would leave such wonderful kids and such a handsome, courteous husband?

Unless Mac had only been putting on a good front for her?

Because he had custody of his kids she automatically assumed he was a good man.

But what if he wasn't?

What if he had his kids because he was an overbearing rich guy who threw his weight around to get everything he wanted?

What if she was about to spend the next several weeks living with another man like Sam?

A
FTER
lunch, Mac took the kids out on his yacht for the afternoon. Standing in the kitchen in front of the French doors, Ellie watched the boat pull away from the dock, grateful for a few minutes to herself.

She had silenced her concerns that Mac might be like Sam by reminding herself of two things. First, she didn't know Mac. She shouldn't jump to conclusions. And second, Mac genuinely seemed to like his kids, to like spending time with them. So what if he'd nudged her out of lunch and really wasn't letting her be the nanny? He might have done it unconsciously. She had no idea how long he'd been without a maid and nanny. But it could have been long enough that caring for his kids was now second nature. And if Ellie didn't soon stop acting like a high-strung spinster, suspicious of every man she met, she'd lose this job, and Cain and Liz would be the ones to suffer.

Her cell phone rang. She looked down and saw Ava's number in caller ID.

“Hey.”

“Hey! I'm at the gate. Now what?”

Ellie glanced around. Not only did she not know how to open the gate, but Mac wasn't here to show her. She couldn't even attempt to please this privileged family on her limited knowledge of cooking. She had to get that
cookbook. “I don't know. I don't know how to open the gate and I can't ask Mac because he just took the kids out on his boat.”

“Well, all I have is the cookbook. Why don't you come to me and I'll pass it through the gate to you?”

Ellie sighed with relief. “Good idea.”

Feeling like a criminal, she snuck out the front door of the echoing mansion, raced down the front yard and reached through the gate bars to get the cookbook from Ava.

“Thanks.”

Cain Nestor's fifty-five-year-old assistant peered over her black frame glasses at Ellie. “Tell me I'll be able to get through the gate tonight when we have to debrief about Happy Maids.”

“You will. I swear,” Ellie said, walking backward up the grassy front yard to return to the house.

“Good. I'll see you tonight,” Ava called, but Ellie was already running toward the door. Cookbook under her arm, she tiptoed up the silent hall to the kitchen even though she knew she was alone in the house. Mac had said he and his children would be gone the entire afternoon, yet she still felt as if she was doing something wrong.

But she wasn't.
She could cook.
She simply hadn't memorized recipes for anything beyond burgers and spaghetti. All she had to do was find a recipe, prepare the food, and serve it like a good maid, then Cain and Liz would both get the recommendations they needed.

Sitting at the weathered table by the French doors, she took the cookbook out of the plastic bookstore bag.
Easy Main Dishes in Under An Hour.
Ellie laughed. Ava was nothing if not perceptive! This should be a cinch.

She perused the recipes, with one eye on the canal so she would see the Carmichael family if they returned
unexpectedly. Spotting a recipe she liked—penne pasta with portabella mushrooms and red and yellow peppers—she took the book with her as she walked around the kitchen, checking for supplies.

The well-stocked refrigerator had both red and yellow peppers and portabella mushrooms. The cabinet held penne pasta. Next she found the ingredients for the Alfredo sauce. Interestingly, in the last cabinet on the row closest to the door leading to the stairway, she also found the controls for the gate, including a small computer monitor that displayed the feed from the video camera. One button said “Open gate.” One said “Close gate.” A system couldn't get any simpler than that.

Because the meal would only take an hour to prepare, she decided to do laundry and some light cleaning while Mac and the kids were out on the ocean.

She found baskets of dirty clothes in each of the kids' bathrooms, but she stopped at the master suite. Mac hadn't even opened the door to let her peek in as he'd done with Lacy's room. A bedroom was such a private space, it felt like an invasion to even look inside. Forget about walking in. She'd feel like an interloper. She'd already had to talk herself out of being suspicious of this guy. She didn't want to give her free-wheeling imagination any more grist for the mill!

Maybe tomorrow she'd be adjusted enough to collect his laundry, but she'd handled enough for today.

After sorting the kids' clothes, she put a load into the washer then returned downstairs, this time using the fancy curved cherrywood stairway.

She walked past the living room with shiny marble floor, heavy tapestry drapes and ultra-modern furniture with glass tables. Not exactly her taste, but in keeping with the rest of the museum-like décor. The room wasn't even
in need of a light dusting. So she checked the dining room, playroom, sitting room and den and found them all in the same spotless condition. She walked to the kitchen where she grabbed the notepad on which she'd made the list of everything that needed to be done as Mac had suggested, and began arranging things in the best order for cleaning. Whether the rooms “needed” dusting or not, she would begin a rotation that maintained the spotless condition of this home.

By the time the yacht returned, she had a schedule developed that would assure the entire house would be kept spotless, the laundry would be done and three meals would be prepared.

Chopping the peppers, she watched out the window as Mac carried Henry on his arm and led his daughter up the dock to the backyard and toward the house. She fought the suspicion again that something was wrong with this picture because she didn't know what it was. It wasn't something she could see or something she'd heard, only a sense she had. If she just had something substantial to base the feeling on, she'd know how to handle it. Instead, she had only an unhappy imagination that was making her crazy.

Annoyed with herself for not dropping this, she waited for them to enter the kitchen, but after fifteen minutes she realized they had probably come in through another door. Two seconds later, Mac walked into the kitchen wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

“Everything okay?”

Trying to behave like a normal maid, not an overly suspicious idiot, she smiled shakily at him. “Great. I spent the afternoon creating a cleaning schedule, so I can hit the ground running tomorrow.”

“There's no rush.” Mac opened the refrigerator and snagged an apple. “The place is immaculate. It can go a day
or two without being dusted. I want you to get accustomed to the house and the cleaning end of things these next few days so that when I go back to work, the kids can be your priority.” He caught her gaze. “I also want this time for the kids to get accustomed to seeing you around the house. To get to know you before you're their primary caregiver.”

Okay. See? He had a good explanation for having her around the kids, but not actually interacting with them. He was giving her time to get accustomed to the house and giving the kids time to get accustomed to her. That made more sense than to think something was wrong with him.

“I'll be fine with the kids.” That she could say with complete confidence. “Helping some friends—” She almost said the women living in A Friend Indeed houses, but thought the better of it. She didn't really know Mac and most of the charity's work was confidential to protect the identities of the women seeking shelter. “I've babysat, played board games and gone to the beach more times than I can count.”

He crunched a bite of the apple, chewed then swallowed and said, “Great.” He paused for a second before he added, “This job won't last long. My assistant is working with two employment agencies now, looking for a replacement for Mrs. Devlin. She'll do initial interviews. I'll do the second interview.”

“So you should have a replacement in three weeks?” Ellie asked hopefully.

He winced. “More like four.”

Liz's entire honeymoon.

“I'm sorry that I sort of strong-armed you into this. But my kids are important to me and I don't want just anybody around them.”

Surprised, but pleased that he'd apologized—once again confirming that he was a nice guy and she had to stop looking for bad things about him—she nodded. “I get that. We'll be fine.”

“And there's one other thing I forgot to mention. I'd prefer that you not tell anyone where you're working.”

She winced. “I'm sorry but I already told Ava. She's helping me with Happy Maids. But you don't have to worry,” she hastily added, not wanting to anger him unnecessarily. “Ava works for Cain. He owns five businesses. She knows how to be discreet.”

“Okay.” He turned to leave the room, but suddenly faced her again. “What are you making for dinner?”

“Penne pasta with red and yellow peppers.” She glanced up at him. “I never asked what time you'd like to eat.”

“I eat with Lacy, which means we always eat before six.”

“Okay.” That gave her forty minutes. “I better get a move on then.”

Henry's soft cries poured from the baby monitor and Ellie froze. Already her impulse was to drop everything and rush to get the baby when he cried. But she waited to see what Mac wanted her to do.

He said, “I'll get him,” and headed for the back stairway. “As I said, when I'm here, I take care of the kids.”

This time his doing her job didn't bother her. He'd explained that he wanted her to get accustomed to things…the house, the cleaning schedule… All that was good. It even made more sense from the perspective of his wanting to give the kids a chance to get accustomed to her.

She had nothing to worry about.

She gathered the items from the recipe and began preparing the sauce. Her eyes on the list of ingredients, she
measured and poured milk, cheese and butter into the pan. Stirring the sauce as it heated, she tried to keep her mind on her cooking, but couldn't.

The instincts she kept trying to ignore tiptoed into her conscious, whispering that Mac wasn't being nice. He was keeping his kids away from her because he didn't really trust her. Sure, he'd apologized about strong-arming her, and, yes, he had a good explanation about why he was doing her job…but there was something in the air in this house. Something that didn't quite fit.

Something…

The sauce in the pot bubbled over and Ellie jumped back out of the way with a squeak as she snapped off the gas burner.

She heard the sound of Mac racing down the stairs and quickly placed her body in front of the stove to hide the mess.

“Everything okay?” he asked, walking into the kitchen with Henry on his arm.

“Great.”

“I thought I heard a squeal.”

The odd feeling returned again. He had every right to investigate a squeal, but the tone of his voice just didn't sit right.

Of course, she might be overanalyzing because she was nervous about having just burned a big part of his dinner!

“I… Um…” She swallowed to gather her courage. “My sauce just boiled over.”

“Oh. Okay, if everything's under control the kids and I are going to take a short walk.”

He took it so casually that Ellie blinked in surprise as Mac turned away. Sam would have screamed at her for
hours for ruining dinner, proving Mac wasn't a full-fledged grouch or even really a control freak. So what the heck was going on here?

As Mac called, “Lacy!” Ellie noticed Henry had on a straw hat and a lightweight one-piece pajama that covered his entire body to protect him from the sun. Ellie didn't criticize Mac's diligence. But it did further the theory that he was very protective of his children and she'd better do the absolute best job she could do when she was alone with them—

Ah! Now she got it.

The parents of the kids she typically babysat for trusted her. This guy didn't know her. So how could he trust her? He couldn't! That was why he seemed to be keeping the kids from her. Until he got to know her he'd probably huddle over Henry and Lacy rather than let her alone with them…and probably also question her every move. His distrust could even be the “odd” thing she sensed in the air of this house.

Lacy ran into the room. She also wore a straw hat to protect her from the sun. “I'm ready, Daddy.”

Mac said, “Let's go.” Then he and the kids trooped out of the kitchen.

Ellie spun around and looked at the milk-covered burner on the stove with a groan. She grabbed her cell phone from her jeans pocket.

“Ava, can you get a jar of store-bought Alfredo sauce here in twenty minutes?”

Ava laughed. “Ellie, you're going to wear me out.”

“This time I can let you in the gate.”

“Great. I'll fill you in on the Happy Maids stuff while I'm there.”

Twenty minutes later, Ava arrived with two jars of Alfredo sauce and the maids' time sheets to be signed for
payroll. As Ellie poured the penne pasta, portabella mushrooms and red and yellow peppers into a casserole dish and then covered them with Alfredo sauce and popped them into the oven, Ava briefed her on Happy Maids' day.

“Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The houses were cleaned as scheduled. The Maids have their jobs for tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Ava.”

“You're welcome. Now, I have to get home. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon around this time.” Ava headed for the butler's pantry, but stopped and grinned at Ellie. “Don't hesitate to call me if you need something.”

Ellie shook her head in dismay. “I'm sorry but this guy is a serious control freak.” She'd finally decided to label him a control freak, if only because distrust was such an ugly word and she didn't want Ava to realize she was uncomfortable. She might want Ellie to leave and she couldn't. Cain and Liz needed for her to do a good job. “I didn't dare risk a mistake.”

Ava laughed. “I was teasing. I don't mind you calling me for help. You're doing this as much for my boss as for yours. So we're in this together.”