His Potential Wife. Grace Green

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      CHAPTER ONE

      “WHAT I want, Mrs. Trent, is a plain-Jane nanny.”

      “A…plain-Jane nanny, Dr. Galbraith?” Ida Trent looked startled. “I’m not sure I underst—”

      Scott Galbraith shot forward in his chair. “Mikey, get your fingers out of there!” He swept his son onto his lap a nanosecond before the two-year-old managed to tug a purple African violet from its clay pot on Ida Trent’s tidy desk.

      The owner of the Trent Employment Agency cleared her throat. “Dr. Galbraith, I’m not sure exactly what you—”

      “Let me spell it out.” Abstractedly Scott dusted potting soil from Mikey’s fingers. “I want a woman whose top priority—in fact, her only priority!—is caring for my three motherless children. I want a woman who doesn’t dream of orange blossom or see me as a potential husband—”

      He broke off as four-year-old Amy stomped toward the office door. “Amy, get back here!”

      Amy plodded on.

      “Lizzie!” Urgently he prodded his elder daughter, who was slouched, reading, against the end of the desk. “Would you please catch your sister before she hits the street!”

      Lizzie sighed as only a put-upon eight-year-old can sigh and took off to restrain her sister. Then none-too-gently she pushed the sturdy redhead down onto a sofa by the window. “Stay there,” she snapped. “And try not to be such an absolute pest!”

      Amy’s blue eyes puddled with tears. “I am not a pest!”

      “Are, too!”

      “Am not!”

      Lizzie flicked back her long blond braid and curled her upper lip in a sneer. “Pest, pest, pest!” Stalking back to the end of the desk, she resumed her slouching position and fixed her gaze again on the pages of her book.

      Scott opened his mouth to chastise her…but closed it again when he noticed that his daughter’s face had become paper-white and her lips were trembling.

      The sight reduced him to despair and helplessness—emotions that had become all too familiar to him over the past twenty months. He felt his heart go out to Lizzie, aware that her emotions must often be in a turmoil similar to his own. Of the three children, she was the one who missed her mother most. And he knew that because she was the eldest, he’d often stuck her with too much responsibility. So instead of berating her, he returned his attention to the woman seated across the desk from him.

      “Now, Mrs. Trent, where were we?”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ