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‘Do you think I’ll break it?’ Kate asked as she balanced on the seat, feeling glad for the sake of her modesty she had opted to wear a pair of pale blue linen culottes with a darker blue sleeveless silk blouse that she wore tucked into the plaited belt. She hoped the outfit gave the professional but practical look she had been aiming for.
Her stint with an infant class had taught her that you needed to stay flexible and not just physically. A young mind not weighed down by preconceptions could seriously challenge you. She had always liked that part of working with young children.
The smile crept back on the little girl’s face. ‘Don’t worry if you do, I’ll say I did it. No one will shout at me, they’ll just be disappointed.’
This heartbreaking statement did not give Kate a good opinion of her predecessor or, for that matter, the child’s father. In her mind he already had a set of horns, now he had added the forked tail to match.
It had always made sense to her that the devil would be handsome—how else would he make sin look tempting? She could imagine that Marco Zanetti could make sin lookveryattractive.
‘Are you hot?’ Freya asked innocently.
Taking control of her wilful imagination, Kate called a halt to the speculative stream of steamy images sliding through her head under the title of sin and Marco and willed the guilty colour in her cheeks to fade.
‘No, not really, and I won’t break the chair, Freya, so don’t worry. I’m actually quite skinny. My brother says my hair weighs more than I do.’ Her smile faded and her hair came in handy as a distraction as she tossed her ponytail over her shoulder as she swallowed past the lump in her throat. ‘How about you pull up your chair and we have some cake to celebrate?’ she suggested brightly.
The worried look that should not be a factory setting for a five-year-old reappeared. ‘Cake is bad for your teeth.’ The child raised her eyes from the plate of pastries on the table. ‘I have very good teeth.’
‘I can see that.’
A smile of pride appeared.
‘You also have a lovely smile. Sorry about the cakes. I just thought for a treat...as it’s a special occasion—our first morning—we might be naughty?’
The child’s eyes grew round as she shook her head. ‘I’m not naughty or I try not to be. Nanny Maeve says Papa was never naughty.’
Marco, who distinctly recalled his Irish nanny calling him alimb of the devilon more than one occasion,repressed a laugh, and closed the door behind him. The sound was drowned out by the new nanny, who showed less restraint in response to his daughter’s claim. Her laugh was low and husky.
From where he stood, Marco got a good view of the puzzled expression on Freya’s face but only the back of the redhead’s burnished head as she turned the laugh into a cough.
‘Does your papa have good teeth?’ Kate asked, even though she already knew the answer to that one—his royalperfectnesscould have given an alpha wolf a run for his money.
Actually, now she thought about it, the wolf analogy was not such a terrible one, she decided, a little shiver slithering down her spine as she remembered his heavy-lidded steely grey eyes.
Shaking her head a little to dispel the image, she decided she had to be tolerant, which, despite her brother’s accusations, she was. An only-child prince told he was perfect from birth—no wonder the man was so up himself!
She was nothing if not tolerant.
You could almost feel sorry for him, not that she did, but his daughter had clearly been raised to put her father on a pedestal and Kate knew well how that ended, when you inevitably realised the people you’d idolised had feet of clay. So, her sympathy was saved for the child’s future disillusionment and her present isolated loneliness.
The former she couldn’t do anything about, the latter she intended to. Her mind was buzzing with innovations to help this child discover fun.
‘Papa never eats sweet things.’ The little girl’s voice halted. ‘At least, I don’t think he does. He doesn’t like them.’
‘Good forPapa,’Kate murmured under her breath, oblivious to the fact the words had reached the object of her sarcastic undertone.
Out of her line of sight the Prince moved into the room, as Kate dwelt contemptuously on the things that Papa, if the reports were to be believed,didlike. Fast cars and tall, elegant, enigmatic, classy women, blondes, brunettes, redheads... Kate tucked behind her ear a strand of auburn hair that had escaped the fat ponytail that fell down her slender back, and diverted her thoughts before her imagination gave the redhead in a clinch with the Prince features or an extra six inches.
She could not imagine a scenario where the tag ofirresistibleattached to a man’s name did not make her wince and it was used overtime when Marco Zanetti’s name came up.
Still, she could forgive him for being far too good-looking if he’d just give a little of his apparently precious time to his daughter.
Kate felt an ache of sympathy for the child, anticipating the day when Freya realised that the figure she appeared to idolise was several light years away from perfect.
‘Doyoulike sweet things? Cakes or sweets...chocolate...?’ She ticked the treats off on her fingers.
‘I don’t know.’
It took Kate a few moments to realise that the child was speaking literally. Her professional scruples about respecting parental wishes slid away. ‘Well, it’s very important to look after your teeth.’ She displayed her own, which were pearly white and even, barring a slight gap between her front ones. ‘I like chocolate, but I wouldn’t eat it for breakfast...unless, obviously, it was my birthday.’
