He’d been listening for her car, standing in the entryway in his chef’s whites with Atlas on his hip and his knife bag by the door. He’d told himself his low-grade case of nerves was about starting an internship for a top chef at a name restaurant…but he couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that his stress was tied to the new nanny.
“You hear that, bud?” Jonah nestled his five-month-old son closer. “Your girl’s here.”
Atlas gave a kick.
“Yourgirl,” Jonah corrected, “because she isdefinitelynotmygirl, and we are going to be very strict with ourselves on that point at all times. Are we clear, Atlas Lawson?”
Atlas blew a bubble.
“I’ll take that as a ‘heard, Chef.’” Jonah took a breath, sneaking a peek through the sidelight to watch her walk up the steps to the front door of the Summer House.
Oh, man. Of course she looked adorably perfect, from that loose knot in her hair down to scuffed Chucks that were next-level charming. In between was a white T-shirt tucked into khaki shorts, a tote slung over her shoulder, and the lithe figure of a woman who could danceen pointeand pirouette straight into his heart.
Exactly where—according to her father—she could not go.
“Okay, buddy. Game face. For both of us.”
He opened the door before she could ring the bell, nearly blinded by beauty and brown eyes and lashes that just didn’t know when to quit.
“The cavalry has arrived,” Pepper announced.
He opened his mouth to say something, but before he did, Atlas flung his arms out, all baby blue eyes and grabby fingers, and made the breathless noise that meant he saw something he wanted.
“I’d say he’s glad to see you,” Jonah said, his voice even as he passed her the baby. “We both are.”
She softened against Atlas and kissed his cheek.
Jonah looked at the floor for one full second, because there were certain images a man could not afford to file directly into long-term memory if he wanted to function at a professional kitchen later that night.
“Thanks for coming early,” he said, and stepped back so she could walk in. “You can plan on three-thirty from now on, but it was crazy here on Saturday during the wedding, and I wanted to give you an official tour and run through Atlas’s schedule again.”
“Works for me.”
“And did it work for…” He had to know. Hehadto ask. “Your dad?”
As of Saturday, when she’d come here for Tessa’s wedding to help him with Atlas and get the lay of the land—because she was definitelynothis date—she had not told her father she’d taken the part-time nanny job.
That mattered because her father, his most important professor in the culinary arts program he was enrolled in, had made it clear that he did not want Jonah to get involved with his daughter.
And then somehow, through some force outside of nature, Pepper became the nanny Jonah so desperately needed.
“Dad knows I took a gig,” she said breezily.
“For me?” he pressed.
“For…someone.”
“Pepper.” He gave her a look of disbelief. “You should have?—”
“I’m twenty-six years old,” she said, a measure of lightness leaving her voice. “He doesn’t see my paychecks or approve my life choices.”
But he held Jonah’s academic career in his right hand. The one that wielded a dangerous chef’s knife. “I think he should know you’re working for me. Conflict of interest and all.”
“Whose interest?”
“The interest I have in my GPA and future,” he replied.
She flicked a hand. “I’ll tell him eventually. He’s happy I’m not breathing down his neck at his office for three days a week and he’ll be overjoyed that you’ve figured out your childcare issues. He told you to do that twenty times.”
