The Nanny Plan Read online

  This billionaire bachelor has a baby challenge…

  Being a father to his orphaned infant niece is out of this tech billionaire’s comfort zone. Lucky for Nate Longmire, Trish Hunter is a natural at motherhood, and she’s agreed to be his temporary nanny. But long glances, slow kisses and not-so-innocent touches are strictly off-limits…

  Trish’s goal is to help Nate in exchange for a big donation to her charity for Lakota kids. Falling for her bachelor boss—and his adorable baby girl—is not part of the plan. But when the month is up, will she be able to walk away?

  This was the closest she’d been to him.

  Close enough to feel the warmth of his body radiating in the space between them. Close enough to see the deep golden flecks in his brown eyes. “I haven’t done anything yet,” she said.

  “You’re here. Right now, that’s everything.”

  Even though Jane was waking up and starting to fuss at still being swaddled in the blanket, Trish couldn’t pull away from the way Nate’s eyes held hers.

  “You don’t have to buy me a phone.” It came out as a whisper.

  The corner of his mouth curved up and he suddenly looked very much like a man who would seduce his temporary nanny just because he could. “And yet, I’m going to anyway.”

  Trish swallowed down the tingling sensation in the back of her throat. This was Nate after a nap? What would he be like after a solid night’s sleep?

  And how the hell was she going to resist him?

  * * *

  The Nanny Plan is part of the #1 bestselling series from Harlequin Desire: Billionaires and Babies—Powerful men…wrapped around their babies’ little fingers.

  * * *

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  Dear Reader,

  This is a story that started with a real-life event. Maggie Dunne, founder of Lakota Children’s Enrichment, won a $20,000 award from Glamour magazine’s 2012 Top Ten College Women contest. When Sir Richard Branson arrived to give a talk at her college a few weeks later, Maggie stood up with her large check and asked how to use the prize money to encourage celebrities to donate. Sir Branson matched her donation!

  The idea of boxing one of the richest men in the world into a charitable corner—with a large check!—fascinated me. Inspired by both Maggie’s boldness as well as the good work she does to promote education among the Lakota tribes, I decided to use her large-check moment as the opener for a novel.

  The rest of the story is entirely fictional, it should be noted. Trish and Nate are entirely figments of my imagination and I hope you love them and baby Jane as much as I do!

  The Nanny Plan is a sensual story about fighting for your dreams and falling in love. And if you’d like to find out more about the charity that inspired Trish’s charity, please check out Lakota Children’s Enrichment at lakotachildren.org. They’re always accepting donations. Be sure to stop by sarahmanderson.com, and sign up for my newsletter at eepurl.com/nv39b to join me as I say long live cowboys!

  Sarah M. Anderson

  THE NANNY PLAN

  Sarah M. Anderson

  Award-winning author Sarah M. Anderson may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out West on the Great Plains. With a lifelong love of horses and two history teachers for parents, she had plenty of encouragement to learn everything she could about the tribes of the Great Plains.

  When she started writing, it wasn’t long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and to see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought they’d go.

  Sarah’s book A Man of Privilege won the 2012 RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Harlequin Desire. Her book Straddling the Line was named Best Harlequin Desire of 2013 by CataRomance, and Mystic Cowboy was a 2014 Booksellers’ Best Award finalist in the Single Title category as well as a finalist for the Gayle Wilson Award for Excellence.

  When not helping out at her son’s school or walking her rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well tolerated by her wonderful husband. Readers can find out more about Sarah’s love of cowboys and Indians at sarahmanderson.com.

  Books by Sarah M. Anderson

  HARLEQUIN DESIRE

  The Nanny Plan

  The Bolton Brothers

  Straddling the Line

  Bringing Home the Bachelor

  Expecting a Bolton Baby

  The Beaumont Heirs

  Not the Boss’s Baby

  Tempted by a Cowboy

  A Beaumont Christmas

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  To Maggie Dunne, the founder of Lakota Children’s Enrichment. You had a very large check and a whole lot of gumption! While I changed many things, I hope I kept your spirit of charitable action going!

  To Maisey Yates and Jules Bennett, who came up with the baby for this book. You guys are the baby experts!

  And to Laurel Levy for making sure I got the details of San Francisco right. I’ll get back out there to visit you someday!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Excerpt

  One

  The auditorium was filling up, which was exactly what Trish wanted. Maybe four hundred people had crowded into the lower level and, in addition to the journalists from the college paper, some reporters from the San Francisco television stations were in attendance. Excellent. A good crowd would leverage some social pressure on her target. No billionaire would risk looking heartless by saying no to a charity in front of a big crowd.

  Trish had been sitting in her spot—end of the third row, to the left of the podium on the stage—for over an hour. She’d gotten here early enough that no one had seen her smuggle in the check. She wished she could afford a cell phone—then she could at least play with that until the talk started instead of being the only person in the room who wasn’t connected.

  She was as ready as she was ever going to be. She just had to wait for her moment. Timing an ambush of one of the wealthiest men on the planet required precision.

  Trish had planned everything down to her shirt—a great find at Goodwill. It was a distressed blue T-shirt with a vintage-looking Wonder Woman logo emblazoned over her breasts. It was a half size too small, but she had on her black velvet suit jacket, so it looked fine. Polished, with a geeky air.

  Exactly like her target, Nate Longmire.

  People continued to filter in for another thirty minutes. Everyone was here to see Longmire, the newest billionaire to come out of Silicon Valley’s wealth generators. Trish had done her homework. Longmire was twenty-eight, which didn’t exactly make him the “Boy Billionaire” that the press made him out to be. As far as Trish could tell, there wasn’t anything particularly boyish about him.

  He was six foot two, broadly built and according to her internet searches, single. But the plan wasn’t to hit on him. The plan was to make him feel like she was a kindred soul in all things nerd—
and all things compassionate. The plan was to box him into a corner he could only donate himself out of.

  Finally, the lights in the auditorium dimmed and the president of the Student Activities Board came out in a remarkably tight skirt. Trish snorted.

  “Welcome to the Speaker Symposium at San Francisco State University. I am your host, Jennifer McElwain...”

  Trish tuned the woman out as Jennifer went on about SFSU’s “long and proud” history of social programming, other “distinguished guests,” blah-blah. Instead of listening, Trish scanned the crowd. Over half of the mostly female crowd looked like they were hoping for a wild ride in a limo to happen within an hour.

  The sight of so many young, beautiful women made Trish feel uneasy. This was not her world, this college full of young, beautiful people who could casually hook up and hang out without worrying about an unexpected pregnancy, much less how to feed that baby. Trish’s world was one of abject poverty, of never-ending babies that no one planned for and, therefore, no one cared for. No one except her.

  Not for the first time, she felt like an interloper. Even though she was in her final year of getting a master’s degree in social work—even though she’d been on this campus for five years—she still knew this wasn’t her world.

  Suck it up, she thought to herself as she counted the number of television cameras rolling. Five. The event was getting great press.

  She was a woman with a large check and a secondhand Wonder Woman T-shirt waiting to ambush one of the richest men on the planet. That was her, Trish Hunter, in a nutshell.

  “...And so,” Jennifer went on, “we are thrilled to have the creator of SnAppShot, Mr. Nate Longmire, here with us tonight to discuss social responsibility and the Giving Pledge!”

  The crowd erupted into something that wasn’t quite a cheer but came damn close to a catcall as the Boy Billionaire himself walked on stage.

  The audience surged to their feet and Trish surged with them. Longmire walked right past her. She had an excellent view of him.

  Oh. Oh, wow. It’s not like she didn’t know what Nate Longmire looked like. She’d read up on his public persona—including that ridiculous article naming him one of the Top Ten Bachelors of Silicon Valley, complete with a photo spread.

  But none of the pictures—not a single one of them—did the man justice. Attraction spiked through her as she studied him. In person, the tall frame and the broad shoulders weren’t just eye-catching, they moved with a rippled grace that left her feeling flushed. He had on hipster jeans and Fluevog boots, but he’d paired them with a white tailored shirt with French cuffs and a purple sweater. A striped purple tie was expertly tied around his neck. He wore a scruffy beard and thick horn-rimmed glasses. They were the nerdiest things about him.

  Longmire turned his face to the crowd and Trish swore she saw him blush as the thunderous noise continued. He did not preen. If anything, he looked almost uncomfortable. Like he didn’t quite fit in up there.

  “Thank you,” he said when the noise did not let up. “Please,” he asked, a note of desperation in his voice, motioning for everyone to sit down. That, at least, worked. “There we go. Good evening, San Francisco State University!”

  More applause. Trish swore he winced. He sat on a stool in the middle of the stage, gestured and the lights went down. A single spotlight fell on him. Behind him, a screen lowered to the ground and a slideshow began.

  “Technology,” he started as the screen flashed images of attractive people on tablets and smartphones, “has an enormous transformative power. Instant communication has the power to topple governments and reshape societies at a rate of speed that our forefathers—Steve Jobs and Bill Gates—only dreamed of.” The audience laughed at this joke. Longmire gave them a tight smile.

  Trish studied him as he spoke. He’d obviously memorized his remarks—not surprising, given that the press had reported his IQ at 145—just above the threshold for a true genius. But when the audience responded in any way, he seemed to draw back, as if he didn’t know what to do when he went off script. Excellent. That was exactly the sort of speaker who wouldn’t know how to tap-dance out of a blatant donation request.

  “And you are on the cusp of this technological revolution. You have that power at your fingertips, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” Longmire paused to take a drink from a water bottle and clear his throat. Trish had the distinct impression that he was forcing himself through this. Interesting, she thought.

  “The problem then becomes one of inequality,” Longmire went on. “How can you communicate with the rest of humanity if they don’t have those things?” Images of tribal Africans, destitute southern Asians, aboriginals from Australia and—holy crap, had he actually found a picture of...Trish studied the photo hard before it clicked past. No, that hadn’t been her reservation out in South Dakota, but it might have been the Rosebud lands.

  Well. Yay for him acknowledging the state of the Native American reservations in a five-second picture, even if the montage did irritate her. All the people of color had been relegated to the poor section of the talk.

  “We have a responsibility to use that power—that wealth,” he went on, “for the betterment of our fellow humans on this planet...”

  Longmire talked for another forty-five minutes, calling for the audience members to look beyond their own screens and be conscious consumers of technology. “Be engaged,” he told them. “A rising tide lifts all boats. Solar-powered laptops can lift children out of poverty. Make sure the next Big Thing won’t be lost to poverty and disease. It all starts with you.” This time, when he smiled at the crowd, it was far more confident—and far more practiced. “Don’t let me down.”

  The screen behind him shifted to the official Longmire Foundation photo with the Twitter handle and website. The crowd erupted into applause, giving him a six-minute standing ovation while Longmire half sat on his stool, drinking his water and looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

  The emcee came back out on stage and thanked Longmire for his “absolutely brilliant” talk before she motioned to where the microphones had been set up in the aisles. “Mr. Longmire has agreed to take questions,” Jennifer gushed.

  Timing was everything. Trish didn’t want to go first, but she didn’t want to wait until the reporters started to pack up. She needed a lull that was just long enough for her to haul out her check and get to the microphone before anyone could stop her.

  About ten students lined up in either aisle. Some questions were about how Longmire had started his company in his dorm room and how a regular student could come up with a billion-dollar idea.

  “What’s something that people need?” Longmire replied. “I wanted a way to take my digital photos with me. Adapting a simple idea that would make it easier to share photos with my parents—and make it easy for my parents to share those photos with other people—led me to adapting the SnAppShot app to every device, every platform available. It was ten years of hard work. Don’t believe what the press says. There are no overnight successes in this business. See a need and fill it.”

  When he was replying, Trish noted, he had a different style. Maybe it was because he was really only talking to one person? But his words flowed more easily and he spoke with more conviction. The power in his words filled the auditorium. She could listen to that voice all night—he was mesmerizing.

  This was a problem. Trish rubbed her hands on her jeans, trying to steady her nerves. Okay, so he spoke quite well off the cuff—which he demonstrated when a few people asked antagonistic questions.

  Instead of acting trapped, Longmire’s face would break into a sly smile—one completely different from the cautious movement of lips he’d used during his prepared remarks. Then he would dissect the question at an astonishing rate and completely undercut the argument, all without getting off the stool.

  Ah, yes. This
was his other reputation, the businessman who, much like his technological forefathers, would occasionally sue people for fun and profit. Nate Longmire had amassed the reputation of a man who never gave up and never surrendered in the courtroom. He’d completely bankrupted his former college friend, the one he’d started SnAppShot with.

  Trish caught herself fidgeting with her earrings. Okay, yes—there was always the chance that her little stunt wouldn’t go over well. But she was determined to give it a shot. The only people who lost were the ones who never tried.

  Finally, there was only one person in line on her side and Longmire was listening intently to a question from the other aisle. Trish looked back and didn’t see anyone else coming forward. This was it. She edged her check out from behind her seat and then stood in line, less than two feet away from the check. She could grab it and hoist it up in seconds. This would work. It had to.

  The person in front of her asked some frivolous question about how Longmire felt about his status as a sex symbol. Even as Trish rolled her eyes, Longmire shot beet red. The question had unsettled him. Perfect.

  “We have time for one more question,” Jennifer announced after the nervous laughter had settled. “Yes? Step forward and say your name, please.”

  Trish bent over and grabbed her check. It was comically huge—a four-feet long by two-feet tall piece of cardboard. “Mr. Longmire,” she said, holding the check in front of her like a shield. “My name is Trish Hunter and I’m the founder of One Child, One World, a charity that gets school supplies in the hands of underprivileged children on American Indian reservations.”

  Longmire leaned forward, his dark eyes fastened on hers. The world seemed to—well, it didn’t fall away, not like it did in stories. But the hum of the audience and the bright lights seemed to fade into the background as Longmire focused all of his attention on her and said, “An admirable cause. Go on, Ms. Hunter. What is your question?”