Free Nanny by Christina Skye

answer.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” Sophy demanded. “Why is everyone frowning? Audra’s late all the time.”
    â€œIt’s probably nothing, honey, but let’s you and I check things out. Just like in
Mission Impossible.
”
    â€œCool. Let’s go.” Sophy skipped toward the stairs, too young and protected to understand that life didn’t always deal out Hollywood-style happy endings.
    Â 
    Tate Winslow stared at the woman he had loved irrationally since even before their first date in law school. “What’s wrong, Cara? Talk to me.”
    â€œThere’s very little to say.” Her shoulders were a stiff, unrelenting line. “Several new cases are taking far more time than I imagined, and two of our staff are out on leave. The girls need me, too, with their new nanny coming.”
    She sounded exhausted, Tate realized. She’d been tired before, but never like this, as if she couldn’t find enough energy to focus.
    Fool that he was, he hadn’t seen it until now.
    â€œYou can turn the Costello appeal over to Tony or Tristan. Either one would take it in a second.”
    Cara’s eyes hardened. “The day I can’t do my job is the day I quit.”
    â€œIt isn’t professional failure to step back and take a breather now and again,” Tate said quietly. “Maybe it’s time you dropped the pace a little. You’ve been working twelve hour days since I first met you.”
    She had been sorting linens at the college laundry, her hands moving fast and expertly. Her face was flushed, her clothes sweaty, and Tate had loved her at first sight. So had most of the male students in the law-school dorm. The linen service had had a huge run on towels that week.
    She had created quite a stir when she had shown up with black boots and sleek black jeans in the front row of Contracts I the following Monday. The first week she had twenty offers for dinner and a study date, but she turned them all down—including Tate’s.
    After that, the queue in the linen service had wound down the hall and out to the street. Tate had been somewhere in the middle.
    â€œTalk to me, Cara.”
    â€œThere’s nothing to discuss.” She sounded calm, at least on the surface. “My decision is made.”
    â€œLast time I checked, there were two of us involved in this wedding. I’d say that gives me the right to ask a few questions when you try to call it off.”
    â€œI can’t discuss this now. The girls are expecting me for dessert, summer school–homework check and bedtime stories.”
    Her face was pale. Did Tate imagine it or was there a hint of fear amid the exhaustion there?
    â€œIs it your boss? I know he’s been giving you hell. If so, I can make a few calls.”
    â€œI don’t want or need special favors. You of all people should know that.”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, it was worth a try.”
    Cara didn’t smile. “I’ve got to go.” When she reached for the door, Tate cut her off. “I’m not letting you leave. You’re working too damned hard, Cara.”
    â€œAnd
you
aren’t? You’re the one with back-to-back breakfast meetings, thirteen-hour days, and power naps in the limo on the way to another policy meeting.”
    â€œThat’s different.”
    â€œWhy? Because you’re a man and I’m just a little ole woman who belongs at home in the kitchen anyway?”
    â€œYou know that’s not what I meant.” Tate held down his anger. She was baiting him, but try as he might, he couldn’t figure out why. “I only meant that you’re worn out. No one works well in a state of exhaustion.”
    â€œYou do.”
    â€œI get by,” he said roughly. “And I get by because I’m thinking about a woman with soft skin and crooked eyebrows. A woman who tells me straight when I screw up. A woman I mean to make my wife,