Nanny and the Professor (Silhouette Romance, No 1066)

Rating:
Summary: A Bumpy Road to a Perfect Match
Review: Cassie Simmons really needs the job as Professor Kingston's Nanny. When she was only fifteen her father died in a freak accident at work and only a month later her mother found that she had a late in life pregnancy. It was too much for the woman and she sank into a depression that lasted six years, till she passed away. Cassie was forced to quit high school and find work to support her baby brother and mentally ill mother. Now Eric is eight and she is in desperate need of this job, however she is afraid the professor may find out her deep dark secret. She has no education, she is a high school drop out.

Professor Joshua Kingston is raising his eight year old son Andrew alone. Andy had been born premature and has asthma, so Joshua has a list of rules the boy must follow for what Joshua believes is his own safety. No playing with neighborhood children, germs. No rough sports, over exertion. No stressful games, they might bring on an attack.

However after Cassie moves in as nanny those rules sort of fall by the wayside as Andy's health seems to improve more every day. Cassie and Eric are really settling in, but she fears what will happen if Joshua finds out about her lack of a high school diploma. She fears he'll fire her. And Joshua instinctively knows Cassie is holding something back and is determined to find out what it is.

Donna Clayton tries to give us some suspense in this book, keeps us wondering about the high school diploma bit, but to me that didn't seem like enough of a secret or black mark on Cassie's past for me to care about on their bumpy road to a perfect match. Right of the bat we see that Josh is an okay guy and there is just no way an okay guy is going to care if his sweetheart graduated high school, especially if she had to quit to support her family, so that took away a bit of the enjoyment for me. I did find the title, borrowed from the TV show starring Juliet Mills, kind of cute though.

A Harlequin Dreamers Review by Lena Langdon