Free Nanny 911 by Julie Miller

wasn’t any good at this.”
    “Let’s go, sweetie.” Quinn picked up Fiona and smoothed the dark curls off her flushed face before laying her in the bed and pulling up the covers. “Daddy will tuck you in.”
    “The dwagon goes grrrr, ” Fiona roared with high-pitched enthusiasm, curling her fingers into a little claw the way Miranda had. “And the pwince and pwincess…e-yah, e-yah.” She thrust out her fist into Quinn’s chest, mimicking Miranda’s rebel charge perfectly.
    “I’ll ‘e-yah’ you, young lady.” Quinn caught her little fist and kissed it before tucking it under the cover, as well. “And the dragon and the prince and princess became friends and planted a garden and lived happily ever after.”
    “Wandy tells it better.”
    “Maybe that’s a story you should read during playtime, not when it’s bedtime.”
    “I’m not sleepy…” Fiona’s big yawn was Miranda’s cue to exit. Fiona turned her face into the soft cotton of her doll. “’Night, Daddy. ’Night, Wandy.”
    Being included in the three-year-old’s goodbye warmed Miranda like a gentle squeeze of her hand, chasing away some of the loneliness and inadequacy she’d been feeling. “Good night, Fiona.”
    Miranda was in the hallway, almost to her room next door, when a real hand snagged her wrist. Instinctively, she twisted free and spun around to face her opponent. But she had no place to go when Quinn closed in on her. She had to flatten her back against the wall and stay put, ignoring the poke of her gun and holster at her waist. Either that, or she could shove her boss’s best friend in the chest or disable him in some other, considerably more painful, way. Miranda opted for standing tall and staying put.
    Quinn braced his hand on the wall beside her head and leaned in. “I do not need you to question me in front of my people. Or my daughter. We have routines in this household for a reason.”
    “Control freak much?”
    “You’re the damn nanny. Not my conscience. I need you to do what I say when I say it.”
    Their voices were charged, hushed, intimate, as they kept their argument beyond the earshot of anyone else in the house. “I’m here to protect your daughter, not to be bullied by you.”
    “Bullied?”
    “You have all the money, all the power—you’re used to people jumping to do your bidding.” His eyes were blue, blue, blue, up close like this. Even the refraction of his lenses couldn’t distort their color. Miranda felt like a specimen under a microscope as they evaluated every nuance of her words and expression. “Maybe that’s how this crazy countdown to New Year’s got inside all your state-of-the-art security—because you haven’t thought of every possible threat. Smart as you are, Mr. Gallagher, you don’t know everything.”
    “Are you always this much trouble, Officer Murdock?”
    “Pretty much.”
    They weren’t touching, but they were both breathing hard as the furtive exchange of tempers and opinions mutated into a different kind of heat. Their breaths mingled and their chests nearly brushed against each other with every inhale. Her head filled with the spicy scent of shaving cream or soap on his skin. Her body warmed with the proximity of his body lined up with hers. She wasn’t even aware of the holster poking into her backside anymore. Quinn’s gaze fixated on her lips, and Miranda couldn’t look away from those laser-blue eyes.
    This was crazy. She was crazy. She was the bodyguard and he was the boss and they butted heads, and she really shouldn’t be wondering what it would be like if he kissed her right now.
    She wrapped her fingers around the chair rail on the wall behind her to conquer the urge to brush that stray lock of hair off his forehead. But she couldn’t. She shouldn’t. Finally, in a breathy voice, she summoned the will to whisper, “You’re in my personal space.”
    “I am.” There was something bold and sexy about the statement of fact and the idea that