Undercover Princess. Suzanne Brockmann

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СКАЧАТЬ it’s important you’re in the information loop, so you need to know that your father’s only considering hiring me temporarily—until you and he and Doug can find someone that you’d like to hire for the long-term. I’ll be faxing my references and resume as soon as possible. I imagine you’ll want to look them over, too. If you have any questions you’d like to ask me then—or now, for that matter—please go right ahead.”

      “Do you ride horses?”

      A flash of movement near the farthest of the two sofas caught Katherine’s eye. Two very large brown eyes blinked at her and then quickly disappeared. Douglas had appeared. So to speak. Katherine looked back at Stacy. “Not well, I’m afraid. Do you?”

      “I hate horses. Is that hokey accent for real?”

      Trey closed his eyes. “Stacy—”

      “More real than your hair color,” Katherine pointed out.

      Doug was back, peering around the back of the sofa, and this time, Katherine didn’t look directly at him. She simply let him look at her.

      Stacy leaned against the wall, feigning disinterest, but there was a definite spark in her brown eyes. “Don’t you like my hair this way?”

      Katherine didn’t hesitate. “The style? Yes. The color, sorry, no. However, it is your hair and you have the right to dye it whatever color you like.”

      It was the right answer, Katherine noted, because Stacy had to work to prevent her approval from leaking past her facade of boredom. “Do you have any tattoos?”

      Good heavens. “No, I’m tattoo free—and completely un-pierced as well.”

      “Not even your ears?” The girl was actually remarkably pretty, with a heart-shaped face that—even through the last layers of baby fat—boasted a pair of dramatic cheekbones that were quite a bit like her handsome father’s.

      And from what Katherine could see of Doug in her peripheral vision, he looked quite a bit like his sister. Same delicately shaped face. Significantly lighter shade of brown hair, though.

      “Not even my ears,” she told Stacy cheerfully.

      “You’re kidding. Are you a virgin, too?”

      “Anastacia.” Trey bristled, his beautiful mouth set in a grim line. “The idea was that you could ask Kathy questions pertaining to her employment here. If you’d rather go to your room, just keep it up.” He strode tensely toward the hallway. “Where is Douglas?”

      “I imagine he’ll come out when he’s ready.” Katherine looked at the little boy and smiled.

      He didn’t smile back, but this time at least he didn’t retreat.

      “I understand you play the clarinet.” Katherine moved to the couch and sat, and, as if Doug really were a dog, she casually draped her hand over the arm rest, down close to him, as if for him to sniff. “I used to play the oboe.”

      “The oboe? Man, double reeds are really hard to—” Stacy cleared her throat, uncomfortable, it seemed, that she’d actually almost been enthusiastic.

      Out of all her sisters, Katherine was the only one who had glided almost quietly through her early teens. And although she’d mostly kept her mood swings to herself, preferring to hide away in her room with a good book, she’d lived through all three of her sisters’ significantly noisier bouts of thirteen-year-old angst.

      “How about you, sir?” Katherine asked Stacy’s father. “Are you at all musical?”

      “You’ve really got to stop calling me that.” He turned to look at her, his blue eyes just as shuttered as Stacy’s brown ones. This was quite a family. Of course, she should talk. The Wyndhams weren’t known for their lack of repression, and out of all the princesses, Katherine was perhaps most guilty of keeping her true feelings under wraps.

      “Trey used to play the piano, but these days he only plays the stock market,” Stacy said.

      “Sir,” Trey said, sidestepping Stacy’s last remark. “It makes me feel like some medieval lord of the manor.”

      He spotted his son, who had gotten close enough to breathe on Katherine’s hand, but not close enough to touch. “There you are.” Several long strides brought him next to the sofa, and he leaned over, scooping Doug up and into his arms. “Doug, this is Kathy Wind. Kathy, this is…”

      The boy was dreadfully, painfully shy, and he clung to Trey, burying his face in the man’s shoulder. “Douglas,” Trey finished somewhat apologetically. “Well, it’s the back of Doug’s head, anyway.”

      He embraced the boy tightly, resting his cheek against the small tousled head for a long moment. “Come on, Dougie. Don’t you want to meet Kathy?” he asked quietly.

      Doug shook his head no.

      “It’s all right,” Katherine said. “We both got a chance to look each other over. He looks all right to me, and as long as I look all right to him, and to Stacy, as well—” she turned to the girl “—I think we’ll get along all right. What do you think?”

      Stacy shrugged. “I guess.” She looked at her father. “Can I, like, go now?”

      Trey glanced at Katherine, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.” He let Doug slide down to the floor as well, and the two children were gone from the room in a flash.

      Katherine would have risen to her feet, but Trey sat down on the other end of the sofa as if he were exhausted, as if every bone in his body had turned to liquid. He stretched his long legs out in front of him, his head against the back cushions, as he stared up at the slightly vaulted ceiling.

      “So,” he said with a laugh that didn’t have much to do with humor. “There we are. In all our dysfunctional glory.”

      He turned his head to look at her, and was unable to hide a glint of despair in his eyes. “I’m not very good at this parenting thing,” he admitted. His smile was self-deprecating. “I guess that was pretty obvious.”

      Katherine chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “What was obvious was that you love them. They certainly are—” she couldn’t keep from smiling “—unique.”

      His smile became much more genuine. “Understatement.” He stood up and she, too, rose to her feet. “I appreciate your spending all this time here this afternoon, Kathy. I won’t keep you any longer.”

      Kathy. Her sisters had sometimes called her Kathy, but no one else ever had. She’d always, always been Princess Katherine. It was funny, actually, hearing her childhood nickname on a man’s lips.

      On this man’s very attractive lips.

      His very maleness seemed to linger about him, never far from the surface. Even now, as he gazed at her, there was something in his eyes that wouldn’t let her forget that he was a man, and she was a woman.

      Katherine wanted him to hire her as a temporary nanny because she wanted to locate one Mr. William Lewis. She also wanted to help Trey Sutherland out of this bind he was in. And, yes, she had to be completely honest here. She liked being looked at and spoken to as if СКАЧАТЬ