Marrying the Northbridge Nanny Read Online Free

and a warm smile.
    By the time he’d joined her and Hadley in the entryway he’d realized that those weren’t her only noteworthy physical attributes—she also had flawless alabaster skin; a perfect, straight, thin nose; high cheekbones any model would have envied, and lips that he couldn’t help thinking of as anything but luscious—although that didn’t seem like a good way to think about his daughter’s nanny.
    She also had a great, compact, curvy little body.
    But it hadn’t only been her looks that had counted in her favor during that first impression. He’d also liked that she hadn’t gone overboard trying to sweet-talk Tiathe way he’d seen babysitters and other child-care givers do in an attempt to prove how good they were with kids. As a rule, once his back was turned, those were the people who ended up being the worst with her.
    Meg Perry had been more on the conservative side than the effusive one, and he knew from experience that Tia responded better to being left to her own timetable when it came to letting new people in. That they were all better off with someone calm, soft-spoken, even-keeled.
    Those were all things that had seemed to describe Meg Perry.
    She’d also seemed slightly self-contained and maybe a little tense about coming into a new situation, but the warmth in her smile had led him to believe that there was a softer side to her that they’d probably see more of later on.
    Then she’d trotted out that stuff about age-appropriate expectations, social skills, and exploring the environment, and that had made him think twice about her.
    Tia was three years old, for crying out loud—he was lucky that she was out of diapers and eating the same foods he did. He needed someone to watch her, play with her, feed her, and keep her out of harm’s way. He didn’t need a bunch of textbook terms thrown at him. Besides, people who were convinced they knew so much more than anyone else that they had to educate lesser mortals struck a particularly raw nerve in him.
    At that point he’d thought that maybe he shouldn’t hire her.
    On the other hand, he’d also known that Hadley was all for Meg Perry. And he’d gotten kind of a kick out ofgiving her a hard time for that communal-living panic she’d shown—kind of a kick that he hadn’t felt in a long while. Plus he’d liked that hint of spunk she’d shown in the kissing-cousins comment.
    And she did have that hair and those eyes…
    He’d opted to give her the benefit of the doubt because Hadley had been so impressed by more than her résumé, because Hadley had liked her and had said that despite leaving Northbridge the way he and Chase and Hadley herself had, Meg still seemed like a Northbridge girl…
    He and Chase and Hadley had all returned to their small hometown because they were weary of what they’d found in more bustling parts of the country—or, in Hadley’s case, in more bustling parts of the world. They all wanted the homier atmosphere of Northbridge. The closeness. The down-to-earth aspects of it. And if that was what Meg Perry could offer Tia, then Hadley was right and Meg was the best person for the nanny job.
    And it was a temporary situation, he reminded himself as he smoothed the quilt on the bed Hadley had made up for Meg.
    Meg had made sure he knew she wasn’t signing on for anything permanent but that could be his escape clause, too, if she ended up rubbing him wrong more than she rubbed him right.
    Not that there would be any rubbing involved, he amended his own thoughts when more literal images of that began to pop into his mind. More literal and appealing images…
    But he wasn’t interested in Meg Perry as anything butTia’s nanny. Not only did he need to get settled into Northbridge again, but he also had to put his divorce behind him once and for all, and to concentrate on being a single dad. And even if he were in the market for a relationship—which he absolutely wasn’t—it wouldn’t be with a woman