MAFIA BOSS LINED UP FIVE WEALTHY WOMEN FOR HIS FIVE-YEAR-OLD SON TO CHOOSE A NEW MOTHER—BUT THE BOY WALKED PAST EVERY ONE OF THEM AND TOOK THE HAND OF THE POOR NANNY NOBODY HAD INVITED TO COMPETE.

Not the nanny. The person.

Hannah Cooper was still holding the repaired train when Matteo Ravalini crossed the carpet toward her. He passed the Cartier box without a glance. He stepped around the enormous stuffed elephant, ignored the offer of a pony, and stopped in front of Hannah's clearance-rack shoes.

"I choose her," he said.

The five women went silent in five different ways.

The woman in cream blinked as if she had misunderstood a foreign language. The one with the horses looked at Lucas, expecting him to correct the child. The woman who had offered a second PlayStation laughed once, then realized nobody was joining her. The pony woman stared at Hannah's patched heel.

Only the woman in black remained perfectly composed.

Lucas Ravalini set his untouched whiskey on the mantel. "Matteo, come here."

The boy backed against Hannah's knees instead.

"You said I could choose."

"I did."

"Then I choose Hannah."

Lucas looked at Hannah. Three days ago, in his office, he'd asked about classroom management, emergency procedures, and why she had left a respectable teaching position at Ashford Academy. He had never asked whether she wanted to marry into his family. Now she understood why the interview had felt strangely incomplete.

She put the train on the carpet and rose.

"Mr. Ravalini, I came about a job caring for your son. Nothing else."

"I know why you came."

"Does everyone else?"

That landed harder than she'd intended.

The woman in black smiled a cool, measured smile. "Victoria Vale. And you must be Miss Cooper. We've all heard such wonderful things about your work with children."

Hannah had been unemployed for four months. Nobody in Manhattan society had heard wonderful things about her work. The last public thing written about her had been a school-board statement describing her as someone who had failed to follow proper channels.

"You have me at a disadvantage," Hannah said.

"Most people are, at first."

"Victoria," Lucas warned.

His son grabbed Hannah's hand with both of his. The gesture was so swift and fierce that the room's expensive manners seemed suddenly ridiculous.

"I don't want another mommy," Matteo announced. "I want someone who stays when the lights go out."

Hannah felt his fingers tremble.

Lucas's expression changed. Not much. The pale scar beneath his cheek sharpened as he clenched his jaw, and his gaze dropped to the child he had been trying, in his own bewildered way, to protect.

"Matteo," he said gently, "we talked about this."

"You talked."

The boy's answer left no room for argument.

A housekeeper appeared at the doorway with the timing of a woman who had learned to recognize disasters before they became visible. "Mr. Ravalini, dinner can be served whenever you wish."

"Thank you, Mrs. Bell. Not yet."

Lucas moved toward the five guests. "Ladies, I owe you an apology. This evening was presented to you under assumptions I should have corrected. My son was supposed to meet potential caregivers. What you were told beyond that wasn't authorized by me."

Victoria's smile narrowed. "Your father said this gathering was an opportunity to consider the future of the family."

"My father isn't raising my son."

Somewhere beyond the windows, a siren moved through the city. Nobody inside the penthouse spoke.

"Please allow my staff to arrange cars," Lucas continued. "I won't waste more of your evening."

The Cartier woman left first, cheeks hot with embarrassment. The game-console woman whispered an insult about Hannah's shoes on her way out. The woman with the horses offered Matteo a gracious good night, which Hannah privately appreciated. The pony woman took the elephant because she'd apparently brought it for the wrong reason and couldn't bear leaving it behind.

Victoria waited until the room was almost empty.

"Lucas, you can't seriously believe this woman is qualified. Her last school dismissed her after an investigation."

"My last school didn't dismiss me," Hannah said. "I resigned after reporting falsified attendance records. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"There will be when somebody finally reads the records."

For a fraction of a second, Victoria looked less like a socialite and more like a person who had heard a dangerous word.

"Attendance," she repeated.

Lucas turned toward her. "Good night, Victoria."

She leaned down toward Matteo. He pressed himself closer to Hannah.

"You remember me, darling," Victoria said. "Your grandfather's garden party? The chocolate horses?"

"You had silver shoes," Matteo said.

Her hand stopped midway to his shoulder.

"I suppose I did."

"Mommy said not to follow silver shoes."

Hannah watched Victoria's face lose its expression. The change was brief enough to miss if you were looking anywhere else.

"Children remember such peculiar things," Victoria said, and left without saying goodbye to Lucas.

The elevator doors closed. Matteo's shoulders finally loosened.

Lucas looked from his son to Hannah. "What happened at Ashford Academy?"

"You read my references."

"I read the references you supplied. Victoria seems to have read something else."

"Then ask me when your child isn't standing in the middle of the room."

She expected to be escorted out. Instead, Lucas studied her for a long moment and nodded.

"Fair enough. Mrs. Bell, can you take Matteo to dinner?"

Matteo tightened his grip. "She comes."

"Miss Cooper may not want dinner with us."

Hannah looked down. "Do you have grilled cheese?"

Mrs. Bell, a broad-shouldered woman with kind eyes, almost smiled. "We can make grilled cheese."

"Then I can stay for dinner."

Matteo looked up at his father as if delivering the verdict on a difficult case. "See? She understands dinner."

For the first time that evening, Lucas laughed. Not loudly. But the sound seemed to surprise even him.

They ate in a small kitchen at the back of a penthouse large enough to require a floor plan. Matteo explained that he hated peas but liked the green color, loved trains but disliked actual subway tunnels, and thought adults should have to pass tests before giving gifts.

"What's on the test?" Hannah asked.

"They have to know my favorite story."

"And what is it?"

He hesitated. "I don't tell people until they pass."

Mrs. Bell turned toward the stove, her face suddenly busy with a pot that needed no attention. Lucas had heard the answer too.

Later, when Matteo went to wash his hands, Lucas asked Hannah to stay behind.

"My wife, Isabella, died twenty-two months ago," he said. "Afterward, Matteo began waking up at night. We brought in specialists, therapists, nannies. Sometimes he seemed comfortable with someone for a week. Then he would refuse to be left alone with them."

"Did he say why?"

"He says they don't listen."

"He might be telling you exactly why."

Lucas seemed to absorb the criticism without defending himself.

"Will you take the job?"

"Only if we agree on what the job is. I won't pretend to be his mother. I won't be used to test your future wife. And if he tells me something frightening, you won't punish him for saying it."

"Agreed."

"You agreed too fast."

"I've just watched six adults turn a five-year-old's comfort into a competition. I'm capable of learning."

She couldn't tell if the answer was sincere. She knew only that the boy had looked relieved when she'd repaired a toy instead of trying to buy him.

"Thirty-day trial," she said. "Written hours. Pay through payroll. The right to call a pediatric professional without asking permission if it's an emergency."

"My attorney will draft it tonight."

"And I go home after my shift."

Lucas nodded. "You have a life. I won't pretend the house owns it."

For a man whose name appeared in more federal investigations than charitable magazines, it was an unexpectedly careful answer.

Matteo returned holding the little train behind his back.

"Miss Hannah?"

"Yes?"

"Can you fix another one?"

"Another wheel?"

He shook his head. "The noise."

Lucas crouched beside his son. "What noise, buddy?"

"The train makes it when I sleep."

"Trains don't make noises when nobody's touching them," Lucas said.

"This one does."

Hannah knelt and held out her hand. The boy gave her the wooden locomotive. Its brass pin shone where she'd replaced it. She rolled it over her palm and heard a faint clicking sound from inside the hollow wooden body.

"Did your mom give you this?" she asked.

Matteo nodded.

"She said if something broke, the right person would know how to look inside."

Lucas went very still. "When did she say that?"

"The last night."

"What last night?"

Matteo looked toward the dark windows and seemed to regret speaking. He had the face of a child who had learned that adults became upset when memories didn't fit their explanations.

Hannah kept her voice level. "You don't have to answer now."

He reached into his pocket and handed her the tiny dried raisin she'd found beneath the sofa. "It's not a snack," he whispered. "It's a tiny engine coal."

She accepted it as solemnly as if he'd presented a medal.

As Lucas walked his son toward the bedroom, Hannah remained at the kitchen table with the train. One side of the wooden body had been rubbed so often that the painted blue stripe was nearly gone. Beneath it, shallow scratches formed two numbers and a letter.

11B.

She traced them with a fingertip.

Mrs. Bell set a mug of tea beside her.

"He hasn't let anyone touch that train since his mother died," the housekeeper said.

"Why?"

The woman looked toward the hallway, then lowered her voice.

"Because someone took it apart the day after the funeral. And when Matteo cried, they told him he'd imagined it."

Hannah looked again at the neat repair and the marks beneath the paint.

"Who took it apart?"

Mrs. Bell's answer came so softly Hannah almost missed it.

"The lady in black."

From the far hallway came the sound of a door opening. Lucas called for Mrs. Bell. The housekeeper straightened immediately, all warmth gone from her face.

Hannah set the train on the table.

A folded slip of paper had worked loose from a seam beside the wheel.

On it, in ink faded almost to gray, someone had written six words:

IF HE CHOOSES KINDNESS, TELL HER.

Hannah looked at the corridor where Matteo had disappeared.