“I don’t have time for you either, so don’t trouble yourself.”
His lips curved for an instant. “And she only hears the last part.” His thumb brushed along the edge of my lower lip, barely skimming it, but a breath rushed out of me just the same. “That is what I’ve missed the most. So responsive. Is it to me, I wonder, or to any sensation at all?”
“Add it to your list of unanswerable questions. Now if you don’t mind—”
“I do mind. I mind very much knowing you’re on this planet, walking the streets of my town, and I can’t have you.”
A thrill went through me, causing my arms to involuntarily band more tightly around his child. She let out a soft whimper, and I glanced down to make sure she was still sleeping.
“And that,” he murmured, his cinnamon-laced breath wafting over my mouth as physically as a kiss, “is just as arousing. You don’t want this responsibility. Yet your first thought is for her.”
“Your daughter,” I reminded him, since he didn’t seem to want to say the words.
Something unreadable passed over his face. Then he was moving even closer, his shiny wingtip shoes crowding my worn-flat sneakers. “My responsibility,” he agreed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Which makes you off-limits, even if you were interested.”
“I am not.”
“The lady doth protests too much.” His mercurial smile flitted away before I could enjoy it. “But in this case, I’ll gladly go without if it means Lily won’t. So, name your price.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Name your price for agreeing to take care of her.” The pinch of his fingers on my chin tightened, then he let his hand drop. “Whatever it will take, it’s yours.”
“A few hours a week? How long?”
Right, that was what I should be asking. Instead of telling him no straight out.
How was I supposed to keep my professional boundaries with Asher when he was so…Asher? Especially when my feelings were already becoming far too unmanageable where he was concerned.
/> And clearly, he’d just recently lost his partner. His wife?
“Full-time.”
Okay, I could deal with that. Maybe. Depending on what his idea of full-time actually meant.
“Like thirty-five or forty hours a week? And we’ll need a trial period, to see if it works out. Because I really don’t think I’m the one for this job—”
“As Lily makes a liar out of you.” He touched her cheek for a heartbeat before slipping his hand into his pocket.
And my heart ached for his little girl even more than it currently ached for me.
“Asher, how long?”
“Full-time,” he repeated. “You’ll be my live-in nanny.”
Eight
“Snug, I’m leaving in two days.”
Halfway across the parking lot to my car after day one of the Free Papers Expo, I blew out a breath. I’d hoped to swing by the gym for some stress relief before I swung by my grandmother’s to pick up Lily, but my grandmother had called before I’d made it two feet past the door.
“I’m well aware.”
“Are you also aware that it’s customary to train someone before you leave them to handle a new job all on their own?”
“I’m handling it.”
“Oh, really. It didn’t sound that way when Hannah called to give me her contact info yesterday. She might not have been excited to take on the position—and I’m still not sure how you managed that feat—but even she’s starting to wonder who hires someone on the spot then vanishes.”