‘I thought we’d agreed on first names, Cade.’

Very slowly, the tension eased out of him.

She turned back to stare at all the over-the-top Christmasness. ‘My mother would find all this the height of tackiness.’

There was no denying that thought cheered her up.

‘You repeat that to Ella and Holly and I’ll throttle you.’

The words came out on a lazy breath but she didn’t doubt their veracity. She stared down her nose at him. ‘I’m the nanny, not the evil witch.’

‘Just make sure you stay in character.’

She frowned and turned more fully to face him. ‘You don’t exactly strike me as the Santa Claus type yourself, you know?’ And he didn’t. Competent, calm in a crisis, perceptive, she’d peg him as all those things, but joyful and jocund? She shook her head.

‘Just goes to show what you know, then.’

But he shifted on his seat and she remembered he was a father—a single father—and his first priority was making sure his daughters were looked after and happy. ‘I would never ruin the magic of Christmas for any child,’ she assured him.

He surveyed her again and then nodded. ‘Glad that’s settled.’

He still didn’t strike her as Father Christmas material, but there was no questioning his devotion to his daughters. It warmed something inside her that she didn’t want warmed. It made her draw back inside herself. ‘When can I meet Ella and Holly?’

He eyed her thoughtfully, but eventually nodded in the direction of her car window. ‘Right about now, I’d say.’

Nicola turned … and fell in love.

Four-year-old Ella and eighteen-month-old Holly wore the biggest smiles and had the most mischievous faces Nicola had ever seen, and they were dancing down the front steps of the homestead and along the path towards her in matching red and green frocks.

Good Lord! She gulped. She hadn’t factored this in when she’d plotted to keep her distance and maintain her reserve as she implemented her self-improvement scheme.

She pushed out of the car, a smile spreading through her. Children, she made an amendment to her earlier plan, didn’t count. Children didn’t lie and cheat. Children didn’t pretend to be your friend and then steal your fiancé.

She didn’t need to guard her heart around children.

Cade watched Nicola greet Ella and Holly and win them over in two seconds flat.

It wasn’t a difficult feat. He refused to give their perplexing nanny any credit for that. Despite all they’d been through, Ella and Holly were remarkably trusting. They’d have shown as much delight if he’d presented Jerry, the pilot, as their nanny.

But as he watched them, especially Ella, delight in Nicola’s undeniably female presence, his heart started to burn. It should be their mother here. Not a nanny. And no amount of Christmas cheer could ever make that up to his children.

His hands clenched. It wasn’t going to stop him from giving them the best Christmas possible, though.

He pushed out of the car in time to hear Ella ask, ‘Can I call you Nikki?’

Nicola shook her head very solemnly. ‘No, but you can call me Nic. All of my friends call me Nic.’

Ella clapped her hands, but at the mention of friends a shadow passed across Nicola’s face. And just as he had back at the airstrip, Cade found that he wanted to chase that shadow away.

He didn’t know why. His children’s nanny wasn’t particularly winning. She was of ordinary height and weight, perhaps veering a little more on the solid side.When she’d first emerged from the plane and had gazed around with a smile curving her lips, he’d been satisfied. When he’d shaken her hand, he’d been more than satisfied.

And then she’d become stiff and prickly and he hadn’t been able to work out why yet. He was pretty sure he hadn’t frightened her—given his size and the remoteness of the station he’d have understood her apprehension. He was even more certain that she hadn’t wanted to turn around and go back home.

She leant her hands on her knees to talk to his daughters—ordinary hair a nondescript brown and an ordinary face. Ordinary clothes—baggy three-quarter length trousers and an oversized shirt, neither of which did anything much for her. But those eyes—there was nothing ordinary about them. Or their shadows.

Christmas wasn’t the time for shadows. And Waminda Downs, this year, was not the place for them.

He hooked a thumb into the pocket of his jeans. Despite what she said, she was running from something. He was certain of it. All the background checks he’d had completed assured him that whatever it was, it wasn’t criminal. The way she smiled at his daughters, her easy manner with them, told him she could be trusted with them, that his instincts hadn’t let him down there.

But could she be trusted to keep her word and not create a cloud over Christmas? Ella and Holly had suffered enough. They deserved all the fun and festivity he could crowd into their days this Christmas season.

Guilt for last Christmas chafed at him, filling his mouth with bile. They hadn’t had a Christmas last year. His lip curled. He should’ve made an effort, but he hadn’t. His hands clenched. Last year he hadn’t been able to pull himself out from under the cloud of Fran leaving … of her almost total abandonment of their daughters … of his failure to keep his family together. He’d let his bitterness, his anger and his despair blight last Christmas.

But not this year. This year no effort would be spared.

As he watched, Ella took one of Nicola’s hands and Holly the other and they led her across to Santa’s sleigh and he thought back to the expression on her face when she’d first surveyed the Christmas decorations—a kind of appalled horror.

Then, unbidden, he recalled a portion of their phone interview last month. ‘Mr Hindmarsh, are you widowed, separated or divorced? I know that’s a personal question and that it’s none of my business, but it can have an impact on the children and I need to know about anything that may affect them.’

He’d told her the truth—that he was divorced. But …

None of the other applicants had asked that question. Nicola had been evidently reluctant to, but she’d screwed up the courage to ask it all the same. His children’s best interests were more important to her than her own personal comfort. That was one of the reasons why he’d chosen her.

Nicola threw her head back now and laughed at something Ella said, and Ella laughed and Holly laughed and all three of them fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Nicola’s face lit up as if from the inside as she gathered his children close to her and the impact slugged him in the gut, making the ground beneath his feet rock.

Blinking, he took a physical step away from the trio.

‘The kids have met the new nanny then?’

He glanced down at his housekeeper, Martha Harrison—Harry for short—as she joined him. ‘Yep.’

‘And they seem to have hit it off.’

Nicola climbed back to her feet, looking perfectly ordinary again as she glanced towards him, her reserve well and truly back in place, and the world righted itself.

He introduced the two women. Harry nodded her approval. It should set his mind at ease. But as Nicola hugged her reserve about her all the more tightly, his unease grew.

He trailed behind as Harry led the way into the house. He waited in the kitchen as Harry and the girls showed Nicola to her quarters. ‘What’s eating you?’ Harry asked, when she returned alone.

‘Where are Ella and Holly?’

The older woman chuckled. ‘Helping Nicola unpack.’

He huffed out a breath. ‘Do you find her a bit … stiff?’

‘She appears to be no-nonsense and low maintenance; that’s good enough for me.’ She shot him a glance as she put the kettle on to boil. ‘Don’t forget she’s a long way from home and this is a lot to adjust to.’

All of those things were true, but …

Cade drew in a breath. He’d let Ella and Holly down enough these last sixteen months. His hands balled to fists. Christmas—bells and whistles … the works—that was what Waminda Downs was getting this year. And he meant to enlist Nicola’s help to ensure it all went as smoothly and superbly as he’d planned.