“And then the oven started to heat in irregular patches—”
“Which Mlle. le Duc had not only seen before, but successfully resolved in her own kitchen with tongs and a chisel—”
“It’s not a ‘remède,’” Désirée said quickly. “I mean, itisaremède, but it’s not a ‘grand’remède, of the sort where—”
“I rescind the question,” Jack interrupted.
The fact that glimpsing her disheveled with a smudge of flour on her cheek and a hammer in her hand made him want to kiss her even more proved the desperate need to set clear and immediate boundaries.
He gave her a pointed stare. “Might we talk privately for a moment?”
She set down the hammer and nodded.
“My office, please.”
He led her into his private study, seated her across from him in the guest chair, and steepled his fingers atop his desk in a manner he hoped projected the image of a man who had everything under control.
Inside, his head was spinning.
Désirée had been using her free time to apprentice “English recipes” in the Skeffington kitchen. Cook, for her part, had seen no objections to playing chef-master, nor to utilizing the family governess as a culinary handyman. And it had all turned out peaches.
Blast it all. Désirée’s brain inflamed his passions just as potently as her beauty.
“No kissing,” he blurted out.
She shook her head rapidly. “Cook and I were just…cooking.”
“Not you and…” He stared at her. Blinked. Shoved the image out of his mind. “I meant you and me. I have no honorable intentions, except to my family. My children and their best interests will always come first.”
She nodded. “That is what I like best about you. ‘Family first.’ I feel the same.”
There. Splendid chat. Everything was resolved.
Except it wasn’t. Only the thinnest sliver of self-control prevented him from bending over the desk and kissing her right then and there. Nothing would be resolved until they were both out of temptation’s way.
“I need to find a permanent governess for my children.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion.
Possibly because he’d just stated the original, already-agreed-upon plan, rather than announce some earth-shattering new development.
She tilted her head. “How is the hunt going?”
Horribly. Primarily because he hadn’t been hunting.
“Confession.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t knowhowto find the sort of governess we need. If I knew, I wouldn’t have come to you to start with.”
“We can search together.” She reached for one of the pencils in their receptacle. “May I?”
“Anything.” He opened his top drawer and handed her a stack of fresh foolscap.
She sharpened the pencil with a knife she apparently kept on her person—he tried valiantly not to let this new detail bewitch him even more—and wroteREAL GOVERNESSon the top of the paper.
“Let’s start at the beginning.” She underlined the title twice. “What do you want?”
Someone to nurture, entertain, and educate his children.
Someone with a distant but foreseeable leaving date: when his twins turned seventeen.
