At His Service: Nanny Needed. Cara Colter

“Is that safe?” she demanded.

      “More safe than getting in your car every day,” he said. “Did you know that you have more chance of dying in your own bathroom than you do of dying on an airplane?”

      Who could argue with something like that? Who could ever look at their own bathroom in the same way after hearing something like that?

      That was the problem with a man like Joshua Cole. He could turn everything around: make what had always seemed safe appear to be the most dangerous thing of all.

      For wasn’t the most dangerous thing of all to have died without ever having lived? Wasn’t the most dangerous thing to move through life as if on automatic pilot, not challenged, not thrilled, not engaged?

      Engaged. She hated that word with its multitude of meanings. She thought she had been engaged. For the first time she did not touch her locket when she thought about it.

      She took a deep breath, squeezed Susie’s hand. “All right,” she said. “When would you like us to be ready?”

      Dannie had never flown in a small plane before. Up until getting on the plane, her stomach had been in knots about it. But watching Joshua conduct extremely precise preflight checks on the aircraft calmed her. The man radiated confidence, ease, certainty of his own abilities.

      The feeling of calm increased as she settled the children, Jake in his car seat, and then she took the passenger seat right beside Joshua.

      She loved the look on his face as he got ready to fly, intensely focused and relaxed at the very same time. He had the air of a man a person could trust with their life, which of course was exactly what she was doing.

      The level of trust surprised her. At this time yesterday, getting off an airplane after having read about him, she had been prepared to dislike him. When he hadn’t arrived at the airport, she had upgraded to intense dislike.

      But after seeing him in his own environment, and now in charge of this plane, she realized the mix-up at the airport probably had been Melanie’s. Joshua gave the impression of a man who took everything he did seriously and did everything he did well.

      Still, to go from being prepared to dislike someone to feeling this kind of trust in less than twenty-four hours might not be a good thing. She might be falling under his legendary, lethal charm, just like everyone else.

      Of course she was! Why else had she agreed to fly off into the unknown with a man who was, well, unknown?

      She did touch her locket then, a reminder that even the known could become unknown, even the predictable could fail.

      Before she really had time to prepare herself, the plane was rumbling along the airstrip and then it was lifting, leaving the bonds of gravity, taking flight.

      Dannie was surprised, and pleasantly so, to discover she liked small airplanes better than big ones. She could watch her pilot’s face, she could feel his energy, he did not feel unknown at all. In fact, she had a sense of knowing him deeply as she watched his confident hands on the controls, as she studied his face.

      He glanced at her, suddenly, and grinned.

      For a second he was that boy she had seen in the photo on the beach, full of mischief and delight in life. For a second he was that football player in the other photo, confident, sure of his ability to tackle whatever the world threw at him.

      Something had changed him since those photos were taken. She had not been aware he carried a burden until she saw it fall away as they soared into the infinite blue of the sky.

      “You love this,” she guessed.

      “It’s the best,” he said, and returned his attention to what he was doing. And she turned hers to the world he had opened up for her. A world of such freedom and beauty it could hardly be imagined. Joshua pointed out landmarks to her, explained some of the simpler things he was doing.

      An hour or so later he circled a lake, the water dark denim blue, lovely cabins on spacious tree-filled lots encircling it. Wharves reached out on the water. Except for the fact it was too early in the year for people to be here, it looked like a poster for a perfect summer. Still, she was actually sorry when the flight was over.

      A car waited for them at the end of the runway, and introductions were made. Sally and Michael Baker were an older couple, the lines of living outdoors deeply etched in both their faces. They were unpretentious, dressed casually in jeans and lumber jackets. Dannie liked them immediately.

      And she liked it that Joshua did not introduce her as a nanny, but said instead that his sister had sent her along because she didn’t trust him completely with her children!

      The Bakers had that forthright and friendly way about them that made children feel instantly comfortable. Jake went into Sally’s arms eagerly.

      “I think he’s been waiting all his short life to have a grandmother,” Joshua said.

      “He doesn’t have a grandmother?” Sally asked, appalled.

      “The kids paternal grandparents are in Australia. My mom and dad were killed in an accident when I was growing up.”

      Melanie had told Dannie her parents were gone, but never the circumstances. Dannie had assumed they were older, and that they had died of natural causes. Now she wondered if that was the burden he carried, and she also noted how quickly he had revealed that to the Bakers.

      There was a great deal to know about this man. But to know it was to invite trouble. Because even knowing that he’d lost his parents when he was young caused a growing softness toward him.

      “That must have been very hard,” Sally clucked, her brown eyes so genuinely full of concern.

      “Probably harder on my sister than me,” he said. “She was older.”

      Suddenly Dannie saw Melanie’s attitude toward her brother, as if he was a kid, instead of a very successful man, in a totally different light.

      Michael packed their things in the back of an SUV, and they drove toward the lake. Soon they were on a beautiful road that wound around the water, trees on one side, the lake, sparkling with light, on the other.

      Then they came into a clearing. A beautiful, ancient log lodge was facing the lake at one end of it, gorgeous lawns and flower beds sweeping down to the sandy shores. Scattered in on the hill behind it were tiny log cabins of about the same vintage.

      “It’s beautiful,” Dannie breathed. More than beautiful. Somehow this place captured a feeling: summer laughter, campfires, water games, children playing tag in the twilight.

      A children’s playground was on part of the huge expanse of lawn before the beach, and Susie began squirming as soon as she saw it.

      “Is that a tree fort?” she demanded. “I want to play!”

      Sally laughed. “Of course you want to play. You’ve been cooped up in a plane. Why don’t I watch the kids at the park, while Michael helps you two get settled?”

      Dannie expected some kind of protest from Susie, but there was none. As soon as the car door opened, she bolted for the playground.

      Michael and Joshua unloaded their bags, and they followed Michael up a lovely wooden boardwalk that started behind the main lodge, wound through whispering aspens, spruce and fur. The smell alone, sweet, pure, tangy, nearly took Dannie’s breath away. The boardwalk came to a series of stone stairs set in the side of the hill, and at the top of that was the first of about a dozen cabins that looked through the trees to the glittering surface of the lake.

      The cabin had a name burned on a wooden plaque that hung above the stairs to the porch.

      Angel’s Rest.

      There were a pair of rocking chairs on the covered, screened-in front porch. The logs and flooring were gray with age, the chinking and the trim around the paned window was painted white. A window box was sadly empty. Dannie could imagine bright red geraniums blooming there. A worn carpet in front of a screen