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first inkling of uh-oh in his eyes.
    “Don’t you ever, ever, go somewhere by yourself without asking first. Ever.” Annie’s voice shook and at that moment, Nate knew that however the woman had first appeared to him, she’d been frightened for her charge. Or maybe she was overcome with anger.
    What he could see of Spencer’s chin started to wobble. “I wanted to see the alligators. You said I could.”
    “That’s no excuse. You did not have permission to come here by yourself. Do you know how dangerous this is? We’ve talked about this. About how you aren’t allowed to go anywhere alone.”
    A fat tear plopped onto Annie’s wrist. “Don’t be mad at me, Annie. I just wanted to see the alligators—”
    Annie shook her head. “No. I am mad at you because you could have been hurt. Badly. Don’t ever do that again.”
    Nate started to intervene. They needed to alert everyone at the house, Spencer had been located and was safe, but as he watched Annie tug Spencer into her arms, saw the small boy cry on her shoulder, something stayed him. Annie wrapped her arms about the boy and rocked him slightly, before lifting and carrying the child toward him.
    “Here,” she said, shoving the boy into his arms. “Carry him up the hill. He’s too heavy for me.”
    Nate flinched as the child wriggled. So much for tenderness. Spencer cocked his head back and stared at him with big brown tear-filled eyes. “Who are you?”
    Annie started scrabbling up the hill, not bothering to look back at where Nate stood holding the child. “Obviously, I’m her minion.”
    “Oh,” the child said, pursing his lips into an O. “What’s a minion?”
    Nate sighed and walked toward the little-used path that would take him back to Beau Soleil. “Someone who has to follow the directives of a master.”
    “What’s diwectives?”
    Nate smiled. “What she tells me to do.”
    “Oh. Then I’m a minion, too,” Spencer declared. “I want down. I can climb good.”
    Nate set the child down because his calves screamed and his back didn’t feel much better.
    Spencer dropped to his hands and knees and made like a monkey scrambling up an incline. The child’s bottom wagged in the air, and he started making monkey sounds. Nate almost smiled because he’d forgotten the silliness of children, but he remembered the seriousness of the situation and recalled Annie’s face as she passed him, handing off the boy. She’d been too emotional to deal with the child.
    A twinge of something unknown plinked in his chest. Odd, and not comforting, was the knowledge he’d become fascinated by the plucky nanny in such a short time, almost from the moment he’d first spotted her behind the wheel of the rented Chevrolet. Some primal urge inside him wanted to crack her veneer and dig beneath her mask of supreme capability to the sweet vulnerability he’d just glimpsed.
    Hell. Not what he needed. A prickling awareness for someone obviously not interested in him. For someone staying a few weeks at the most. For someone hiding something. His instincts told him so, and if there was one thing Nate could claim about himself, it was having good instincts. Something was off about the nanny.
    By the time he emerged from the path, Annie had Spencer by the hand and people were bearing down on them, including the director and his wife.
    Catastrophe averted.
    But something told Nate things were just starting to heat up. Or maybe that was his blood. He never thought of himself as a Mary Poppins man, but that nanny was doing weird things to him. And he didn’t like it.

    * * *
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, after a supper of Creole fried chicken and a summer salad, Annie sat in the wood-paneled den of Beau Soleil, watching as Tawny balanced a teacup on her knee and stroked Spencer’s head. He sat on the floor putting puzzles together while his mother read a fashion magazine and occasionally chatted with Picou about psychics, mediums and the truthfulness in séances. For once,