The Single Dad's Italian Invitation
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Susan Meier
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
THE FIRST FRIDAY in June, Wyatt White’s limo stopped in front of the Montgomery, one of Manhattan’s premiere residences on the Upper East Side. He slid his eight-month-old daughter Darcy out of her car seat. Careful in a way only a single dad knew how to be, he hoped she’d sleep through the jostling while he moved her to the carrier on his chest. But her eyes popped open, and she began screaming again.
“You need a nanny.”
Wyatt peered at his business partner, Cade Smith. With thick blond hair and piercing blue eyes, he resembled a surfer more than a businessman, but Cade was shrewd. From the look on his face, Cade had calculated the risk and knew Wyatt couldn’t take his sweet baby girl to the upcoming negotiations that Wyatt had to handle.
“No kidding. But I’m wheels up for Lake Como in four hours. That’s not enough time to interview and hire someone.”
“Call a service.”
“I’m not leaving my child with a stranger!”
“The service would vet anybody they sent over. Candidates might be a stranger to you, but not to the service.”
“That’s the worst argument you’ve ever made about anything, anywhere, any time.”
Cade snorted. “You’re too damned picky and it isn’t just bad for poor Darcy. It’s going to cost us the biggest deal of our lives. Trace will have your head.”
Wyatt winced. Trace was the third partner in what they laughingly referred to as Three Musketeers Holdings. And he would have Wyatt’s head. If Cade was the analyzer, Trace was a fixer. He saw problems and found answers. But Wyatt was the mastermind. He saw opportunity and located the path to get what they wanted and negotiate for it.
Which was why he was the one going to Lake Como to strike the deal with Signor Bonetti to buy his shipping empire.
He had to hope the old guy liked kids. Because he was going to have to bring Darcy with him to their meetings. The only alternative was to leave his baby—his sweet, innocent child—with his stuffy socialite parents. A problem because he’d never told them they had a grandchild. He had enough on his plate adjusting to being a dad. He wasn’t ready to add his grouchy parents into the mix.
The limo driver was suddenly at the door, opening it so Wyatt could slide out. Juggling Darcy, her diaper bag and his briefcase, he hoisted himself onto the sidewalk.
Even if it was true that he couldn’t keep a nanny because he wanted the best for his child, this was getting old.
He leaned down to be level with the limo door and told Cade, “I’ll call you when we get settled.”
“I’d rather have you call me when you get a nanny.”
The astute driver quickly closed the door to end the conversation and, grateful, Wyatt turned to the Montgomery. Instead of the quiet, sedate building he loved, the place was a beehive of activity. Movers carried furniture and lamps out of the lobby, hauling them to a big box truck.
He squinted at the movers, wondering why they weren’t using the service elevator. Then he saw the letters FBI printed across the backs of black jackets.
The world stopped for a few seconds. He couldn’t hear the blare of taxi horns or Darcy crying. He kept staring at those big white letters.
FBI. Someone in their building had committed a federal offense.
That’s why they weren’t using the service elevator. They were making a statement. Seizing someone’s property. Probably hoping the story would be on the six o’clock news.
Darcy amped up the volume of her crying, jerking him back to reality. He rubbed his hand up and down her back. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, and you can’t tell me. But I’d do anything to help you.”
Walking into the lobby with a screaming baby, he knew he was going to have to figure this out soon. Not merely because the FBI commotion seemed to be making his daughter’s crying worse, but because he had to negotiate for a shipping company.
“Pete,” he called to the doorman across a stack of furniture. “What’s going on?”
“You don’t know?” Pete shouted to be heard above the baby who had ramped up her crying again.
Guilt that he couldn’t settle Darcy raced through him. When she’d been left with him a few months ago, he’d been aces. Now, suddenly, he couldn’t get her to stop crying. “I miss a lot lately.”
Pete chuckled. “I shouldn’t laugh. The building’s been full of trouble lately. First, you get a baby you didn’t know you had. Then old Mrs. Remirez gets pneumonia. Now, Sophie’s been evicted.”
Wyatt blinked. “Sophie?”
“Your ex.”
That was the problem with living in a five-condo building. It was like a small town. Everybody knew everybody and nobody’s business was sacred. “She’s being evicted?”
“Not by us. By the FBI. They’re seizing her condo. Her mom bought it and pays the HOA fees. Apparently, she’s been arrested.”
Wyatt squeezed his eyes shut. He and Sophie had met in the lobby the day she’d moved in, and it had been like being struck by lightning. She was tall, beautiful and so funny he’d been captivated. He’d taken her to dinner that night and she’d told him that her mom, owner of a small but growing investment firm, had bought the condo as an investment for a client and needed someone to live in it. Another person might think she’d offered her the condo out of guilt for leaving Sophie with her dad when Sophie was only three. But Sophie assured him her mom had no such feelings. She’d gotten pregnant in a one-night stand and “tried” to make it work with Sophie’s dad. When it hadn’t, she dropped them both.
If the FBI was seizing a condo supposedly owned by a client of Sophie’s mom’s, that meant Erica had done something really bad. Maybe even lied about who owned the condo.
He scrubbed his hand across the thick beard on his chin. “Is she gone?”
“Nope. Still up there. She didn’t get prior warning, so I’m assuming she’s making sure they don’t take things she bought herself.”
Common sense warred with common decency. It had been three years since he and Sophie had dated. After they broke it off, their schedules were such that they never even bumped into each other in the lobby. Plus, he had a private elevator to the penthouse. They didn’t have a connection anymore. It wasn’t his job to check up on her.
But he also knew that she’d taken advantage of not needing rent money to cut her work hours in half and enroll in university. She desperately wanted a degree, even if she was starting at twenty-one instead of eighteen, so she’d thrown herself into her studies and she didn’t have a lot of friends. Most likely, her mom was in an interrogation room somewhere. Her dad had remarried, had another family, and didn’t bother with Sophie much. If Sophie was still in her condo, she was up there alone.
A river of genuine pain for Sophie surged through him. She was the sweetest, nicest, funniest woman he’d ever dated.
And she was alone.
He growled in frustration. With his baby screaming on his chest, he headed for the general elevator. He was not the guy who did missions of mercy. He was the guy who cut deals, grew businesses, made money. How the hell had he become the guy with the baby, who checked up on his old girlfriend?
The elevator bell dinged, and the door opened. He stepped inside. As the doors closed, he looked down at Darcy.
“You wouldn’t happen to know if your mother casts spells, creates voodoo dolls...anything like that?”
Darcy only continued to sob.
He tried rubbing her back again. “I’m just saying... I seem to have a lot of weird things happening in my life and she’s the only person I know who really hates me... Well, Sophie used to.”
Which could potentially turn his checking up on her into an ugly scene.
He took a breath.
It had been three years. She couldn’t still be angry. And he couldn’t stand the thought that she was facing this alone.
The elevator bell pinged. He stepped out into the hall and walked past the parade of agents carrying Sophie’s furniture.
Darcy snuggled against his chest, a move she usually made before she fell asleep, even if it was out of pure exhaustion from sobbing. Simultaneously relieved about Darcy and hesitant about Sophie, he paused at the open door of her condo. Sophie sat on a box in the middle of her empty space, her back to him as she stared out the floor-to-ceiling window. Her long yellow hair was a mass of unruly curls. The T-shirt she wore outlined her slim back.
Attraction and memories hit him like a freight train. He’d been crazy about her. She was funny and soft. Every day with her had been filled with simple fun—
Which was why she’d deserved someone a lot better than a workaholic businessman and a head full of expectations that wouldn’t come true. He’d known it. He’d handled it. He’d broken up with her when she started talking as if she expected them to be together forever. She wanted marriage, kids, a house in Connecticut—the trappings of his parents’ picture-perfect, fraudulent lives.
She wanted what his parents had. Probably because she didn’t know happily-ever-after was a lie.
But he did.
To him, the breakup had been logical, a way to avoid worse pain in the future. He hoped she’d realized that in the three years that had passed and was no longer angry.
He stepped into the empty open-floor-plan area. “Hey.”
She turned from the window with a weak smile. When she saw him, her eyes widened before drifting to Darcy.
They hadn’t spoken in three years and in that time he’d fathered a baby. The whole building knew the general story, but he’d been careful with the specifics. It was normal that she’d be curious.
“Hey.”
“Everything okay?”
She sat up straight, demonstrating her fierce pride. Her mom hadn’t wanted her. Her dad struggled to raise her and remarried quickly after she was self-sufficient and basically moved on without her. She had a way of pretending none of that mattered.
“Oh, sure. I mean, it’s no thrill being evicted, but this condo was temporary. I knew that.”
Because it was an investment for one of her mom’s clients. Still, she’d been going to school, hoping to get through enough semesters that finishing would be possible.
When they were together, she’d just begun her freshman year, but she’d lived in this condo the six months they’d dated and three years after that. The stay had lasted a lot longer than she’d thought.
“You only have another semester to get your degree, right?”
She batted her hand. “Don’t worry about that.”
Hope for her rattled through him. “You finished?”
She shrugged. “No, I have two left. But maybe I don’t want to keep going. It was a fluke that my mom showed up with a condo that needed babysitting. With what I know now, I could easily become someone’s assistant or maybe manage a coffee shop or something.”
He couldn’t believe his ears. Where was the formidable woman who could conquer anything? When she’d told him the story of her mom offering her a condo to live in, giving her a chance to get her degree, she’d said she was the luckiest person in the world—
She couldn’t possibly want to quit.
“Of course, you should keep going!”
“Look, some people in life are meant to run businesses and make big deals.” She smiled briefly. “Like you. Other people like me are meant to be worker bees.”
“That’s crazy talk. You have a good mind. You have a talent for making people happy and comfortable. You will be somebody someday.”
“Stop.” The optimism she’d been trying to display disappeared from her voice and her pretty face. “I don’t need a cheerleader. What I need is to be realistic and I am. I always knew the day would come when I’d have to leave. I was lucky to get over three years here. Now I need to be realistic.”
Seeing her brought so low made his chest ache. Even he hadn’t hurt her this bad. Damn her mother!
He glanced down to make sure Darcy really had fallen asleep. Seeing her softly closed eyes, he strolled a little farther into the room, keeping his voice low and even, almost a whisper. “If it’s a matter of money, I could have this condo back in your hands in a few days.”
She rolled her eyes and mimicked his lowered voice. “I don’t want your charity.”
“It wouldn’t be charity. I’d buy the condo, let you live here until you finish school, then sell it...probably at a profit. You know how Manhattan real estate is. The longer I keep it, the more I make.”
“Did you not hear what you just said? You’d let me live here.”
Darcy woke with a start. She glanced around the strange environment and released a wail that would have curled Wyatt’s toes had they not been in shoes.
Sophie’s face crumbled. “I woke her! I’m so sorry!” She bounced off the box. Tall and slim in her faded jeans and bright yellow T-shirt, with elbow-length blond hair that swirled around her when she moved, she took Wyatt’s breath away.
He needed a second before he could say, “No. You didn’t wake her. She’s been like a bear cub with a thorn in its paw for about a week. I have no idea what’s wrong.”
Sophie eased over. Darcy continued to scream.
“How old is she?”
“Eight months or so.”
“Does she have any teeth?”
“She’s a baby. Babies don’t have teeth.”
Sophie gaped at him. “Babies can start getting teeth as early as three months.” She raced toward the kitchen, washed her hands and dried them in a paper towel, then walked to him again. “Turn her head toward me.”
Wyatt did as he was told. Sophie opened Darcy’s mouth and stuck a finger inside. “There, there, sweetie. Your daddy’s a newbie, but I’m not. I have two half siblings. A sister and a brother. I’ve been through this.” She paused. “Yep. Two teeth coming in on the bottom.”
“Really? And it hurts so much that she screams? Why don’t I know about this?”
“Why don’t you know?” She frowned. “I’d have thought you’d have researched it by now.”
Because he was too damned busy with a baby, a job and two partners eager to move into the next phase of their business.
Getting exhausted just thinking about it, he ran his hand along the back of his neck as Sophie continued to run her fingers along Darcy’s gums. The scent of her shampoo drifted to him. He could see the light freckling on her pale skin. It had been three years since he’d touched her, yet his palms itched with the memory of how soft she was.
Still rubbing Darcy’s gums, Sophie said, “There are two things to know. First, teething is painful, but also it’s a strange feeling so it scares her. Second, see how I’m massaging her gums?”
Forcing his mind off his enticing memories of her supple skin, he nodded.
“That sooths the pain. You need some things for her to chew on.”
He gaped at her. “Like a chew toy for a dog?”
She sighed. “Sort of but more like a teething ring. You can even get rings you freeze so they do double duty. They give her something to work her gums, even as the ice numbs them. You can find them online or at a drugstore.”
Relief rolled through him. “Thank God.”
A few seconds of massaging Darcy’s gums had calmed her, but Wyatt wasn’t fooled. This peace wouldn’t last.
Still, he wasn’t done with Sophie yet. He might not want what she did out of life, but he’d always liked her. He could help her. If there was one good reason to have money, it had to be the ability to use it to help people.
“Okay. You know I need to go to the drugstore immediately. So don’t argue about me buying your condo back from the Feds. Let me do this for you.”
Amazed that Wyatt could be so clueless, Sophie Sanders shook her head. It would be a cold, frosty day in hell before she’d let him buy her condo back and let her use it. It would be a cold, frosty day before she’d let him do anything for her. The tall, dark-haired Adonis, with the neatly trimmed beard that made him look like a sexy stockbroker, had broken her heart into so many pieces she had doubted she’d ever get it back together. There was no way she’d depend on him.
Actually, she was done with depending on anybody. Her dad had a new family. Her mom was a thief and a liar. Even the guy trying to help her had proven himself untrustworthy. So...no. She would be standing on her own two feet from now on.
“I’m fine.” She was fine. She was twenty-four, almost twenty-five. She had experience waitressing and almost had a degree. Her mom might have let her use the condo, but Sophie had worked for spending money. Yes, she’d be moving out of Manhattan, but there were worse fates.
“Seriously, Wyatt, you don’t have to worry about me.”
“You are so stubborn!”
“I’m stubborn?” She laughed. “Look, who won’t even hire a nanny.”
“I’ve hired plenty of nannies.”
“You simply don’t keep them.” She might not have spoken to Wyatt in the past three years, but a guy didn’t get a baby dumped on his doorstep without people talking. She knew one of his former girlfriends had figuratively dropped Darcy in his lap and then gone. Pete had also told her Wyatt hadn’t known the ex was pregnant. But he hadn’t dodged his responsibilities. Which made his not being able to keep a nanny extremely odd. The doormen even had a betting pool. No nanny ever lasted more than a week, so betters had to choose a day and a time the nanny would race through the lobby with all her belongings. The winner was the person who picked the day and time closest to when Wyatt fired her.
“There’s always something about them that isn’t quite right.” He glanced down at Darcy, then back at Sophie. “She’s still not screaming.”
“The massage will last a bit. It would last even longer if you would go to the drugstore already and get one of those teething rings that I told you about.”
His eyes narrowed. His expression shifted. She knew the look. He was calculating something in his head. “You learned all this from helping with your brother and sister?”
“I lived with them for two years after my dad got married, from sixteen to eighteen when I moved out.” She shrugged. “I picked up some stuff just watching my stepmom.”
“You know a lot about kids?”
She frowned. “I know a bit about babies.”
“I leave this afternoon for Lake Como, Italy. I’ll be there for the next two weeks or so, negotiating to buy a company. I suspect it will take ten days, but we have the extra four just in case.”
Surprised by the change of subject, she peered at him. “Bragging or complaining?”
“I desperately need someone to come with me to help with Darcy. I can’t take her to negotiations.” He winced. “I mean, I could. I’ve done it off and on for months... But this deal is important.”
Suddenly his calculating expression made sense. “Are you asking me to come with you to take care of your child?”
He winced again. “I know. It really sounds awful of me, but you need cash and a place to stay, and I need someone to care for Darcy.” He took a breath. “I would pay you handsomely. Pay you. For your help. This wouldn’t be charity.”
She said nothing, even though the money she could make would be a huge plus in terms of getting a new apartment, since it might be enough for a security deposit.
He shook his head. “We leave in four hours. I’ll go to the drugstore now. Give you some time to think. But two things to consider. Number one, this is a one-shot offer. When I get to Italy, I will be calling a service. I have to have a nanny. I would prefer someone I know, and someone who seems to know what Darcy needs. You fit both categories. Number two, how long do you think it’s going to be before the press gets wind of this?” He motioned around her empty condo.
“The press?”
“The FBI doesn’t march up and down a street in the Upper East Side without the media noticing.”
“I’m not worried. I’m not the one who stole from my clients.”
He snorted a laugh. “That might be the reporters’ angle. Innocent daughter of embezzler loses her home. They’re guessing you’re upset. They’re guessing you might know stuff about your mom that will make a juicy story.”
“I didn’t even see my mom when she offered me this place. I got the keys from the doorman. We don’t have brunch or girls’ night or wine Wednesday. I know nothing about her. I was an available body to live in an investment property. If her secretary had been without somewhere to live, she would have just as easily offered it to her.”
“Sounds like an interesting story to me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Her nonexistent relationship with her mother added to her mom’s embezzling did make one of those melodramatic made-for-TV stories.
Damn it. She hated being thought of as pathetic.
Wyatt said, “I think you need to get out of the city. Two weeks is long enough for the story to die down and for you to prep yourself for what you’re going to say if they do find you.” His head tilted. “And they will.”
Damn it! They would find her if she moved to any one of the five boroughs...or her father’s house. Sheesh, of course, they would look for her at her father’s house! And that was where she had planned to stay until she found another job and a rundown apartment she could share with roommates.
“Plus, if you come to work for me, you’ll be under the umbrella of my legal team and PR team. They can say no comment for you a million times. Protect you.”
She froze. That sounded a lot better than dodging reporters and hiding in whatever shabby apartment she could find—that is, if she didn’t get fired from her current job. Actually, it didn’t matter if she got fired. Her waitressing job in a diner didn’t pay enough for expenses, let alone food. As of today, she needed a new, full-time job. But if her name hit the papers, she might have trouble finding someone who would hire her. Especially as a waitress in a classy restaurant where she could earn decent tips.
“The PR department can help you control the narrative. Better yet, they can help you create one.” He frowned, running his hand over his beard as he thought. “You need a story. Even if we stick solidly with the truth, it must be written in such a way that it comes out correctly. You know. The PR department creates a paragraph or two of information that doesn’t leave room for questions. Something you can say to everybody who approaches you.”
Her brain homed in on that. She could see herself with her head high and her shoulders back, easily reciting a prewritten line or two that got her away from reporters and explained things to prospective employers when she went for job interviews.
“Keep talking.”
“Nope. That’s all I have to say.” He headed for the door. “I’m leaving for the drugstore. The decision is up to you. The limo will be out front at three. Have Pete bring your bags down. If you’re not there, I’ll call a nanny service in Italy. It doesn’t matter either way to me. But I think you’d make a good caregiver for Darcy—better than a stranger—and as I said, I’ll pay you.”
Sophie watched him leave, then with the FBI almost done taking all the things her mother had bought, all the furniture, all the lamps, all the rugs, she walked back to her bedroom to pack her clothes.
Though the idea of a legal team and a prewritten statement by professionals tempted her, she couldn’t go to Italy with an ex who had seriously broken her heart—
Could she?
No. That was—
Was what?
She had no idea. She was homeless and would be the target of God knew what until the story died down.
The reality of her situation rolled over her. The FBI seemed to realize she didn’t know anything, but that could make her story more interesting to the media. She’d be the abandoned daughter. The child her mom left and didn’t even call to see how her life was going. She was literally the perfect avenue for the press to make her mother’s arrest juicy and titillating. Stealing from clients was bad. Not even talking to your child? That made Erica Wojack heartless.
Sophie stretched away from the suitcase she was packing. She really did need a professional to word her story.
She took a breath, thought about what she was signing up for in Italy if she became Darcy’s temporary nanny. She’d be rescuing poor Darcy from having to go to meetings. She’d dated Wyatt White long enough to know that his negotiation sessions lasted ten or twelve hours a day. That poor baby would be stuck in the carrier on his chest for hours on end.
No child should have to endure that.
But those long meetings also meant that she’d barely see him. Add that to the fact that they’d broken up three years ago and she was over him. He’d hurt her, and she was smarter than to make the same mistake twice.
She did need time to think all this through. Especially how she would handle it in public.
She might not be going to jail, but the internet was forever. How she behaved would end up on YouTube and whatever new platform was being invented. Future employers would see her either calm and composed or frazzled—or angry. Part of her really wanted to be angry. When she was little more than a baby, her mom had left her with her dad, a blue-collar worker who just made ends meet. She’d had no chance at school until her mom plucked her out of her dad’s apartment in Queens and gave her a shot at fixing her life.
Only to have it all snatched away—not because her mom had sold the condo—because her mom had embezzled from clients. If she thought about it too long, her head wanted to explode. And she did not want that on the six o’clock news...or the internet.
Wyatt was right. She needed a story and it had to be solid and well-written enough that it wouldn’t make her look pathetic or like a hothead.
She also needed two weeks out of New York, a break before she had to face the repercussions of the crimes of a mother she didn’t even know.
She’d be crazy not to take him up on his offer.
