My (Mostly) Temporary Nanny: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy Read online

  My (Mostly) Temporary Nanny

  Penelope Bloom

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  Contents

  1. Nola

  2. Jack

  3. Nola

  4. Nola

  5. Jack

  6. Nola

  7. Jack

  8. Nola

  9. Jack

  10. Nola

  11. Jack

  12. Nola

  13. Jack

  14. Nola

  15. Jack

  16. Jack

  17. Nola

  18. Jack

  19. Nola

  20. Nola

  21. Jack

  22. Nola

  23. Jack

  24. Nola

  25. Jack

  26. Nola

  27. Jack

  28. Nola

  29. Jack

  30. Nola

  31. Jack

  32. Nola

  33. Nola

  34. Jack

  35. Nola

  36. Jack

  37. Nola

  38. Jack

  39. Nola

  40. Nola

  41. Ben

  42. Nola

  43. Jack

  44. Epilogue - Nola

  45. Epilogue - Jack

  1

  Nola

  Some women perspired gracefully. As in, they got a light peppering of sparkly perspiration around their noses when they got hot. Maybe if things got real serious, they’d even have to wipe their brow occasionally.

  I was not some women. I sweated. I especially sweated when our restaurant owner was too cheap to replace the dying A/C unit that couldn’t have even cooled off a fight between two Canadians. It was one of my many unfortunate charms. As a server, it was doubly unfortunate because I had to show up to work like some rec league middle-aged athlete decked out in a sweat band and wrist bands to avoid dripping in people’s food.

  I flinched at the sound of a plate crashing to the ground from the kitchen. There was a brief curse, then the sound of Tony laying into whoever had made the mistake.

  I used my wristbands to wipe a drop of sweat from my nose and continued punching in an order at the computer. Before I filled my newest table’s drinks, I stopped by the stool at the bar where my six-year-old brother sat. He was suspended from Kindergarten for two days—yes, that was possible. For the last three years, the little demon had been my sole responsibility.

  I gave his head a pat while he did a poor job of hiding the salt and pepper shakers he'd undoubtedly been in the process of sabotaging. “Why doesn’t it look like you’re practicing your spelling, Griff?”

  Without hesitation, he belted out the correct spelling of every word I’d given him for practice. He wouldn’t have been my little brother if he didn’t follow his recital with an obnoxious little wiggle of his eyebrows and a smirk.

  I stuck one palm toward him and planted my other fist on my hips. “Give me them.”

  Griff set both shakers in my hand carefully. With a little wiggle, I confirmed he’d loosened the tops so the entire contents would spill on the first customer to try to use them. “Really? If you’re going to devote your life to chaos, the least you could do is be original.”

  “What’s original?” he asked, reminding me that despite flashes of brilliance, my brother was still just a kid.

  “Forget it. But I’ll get you some more words to practice in a few minutes. I’ve got to get these refills.” I took two steps toward the soda machine, then stopped, turning to face Griff once more. “No more trouble. You understand me?”

  He held up his little palms like I’d just waved a gun in his face. I sighed, then smiled. Despite the hell he caused, I did take pride in taking care of him. Most of the time, I thought I was doing a horrible job of it, but I would’ve liked to see even a trained professional come close to handling Griff. The kid was more of a handful than a trophy wife on her way out of the plastic surgeon.

  I was setting the drinks down when the bell over the door dinged. Three men who were each so tall and broad that they nearly swallowed up the entire doorway were coming in. A little hiccup of silence rolled through the restaurant as everyone seemed to sense their presence. Some people turned to openly stare, and others pulled out cell phones to make videos.

  I didn’t entirely blame them. The first man, though I didn’t recognize him, was stop what you’re doing attractive. He was clean cut, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie, and had an air of confidence and power that was undeniably sexy.

  As if there’d been some cosmic arrangement to cluster the hottest men I’d ever see into my life into a single encounter, the man just behind the first was equally stunning. But I recognized the mischievous eyes, the half-smile, and the messy blond hair. That was Chris Rose. The Chris Rose. The same one I’d barely been able to avoid hearing about any time I turned on the radio or the TV for the past few months once he got tangled up in all the engagement and wedding controversy.

  The final man through the door was cut differently than the first two—who, I realized as some latent knowledge bubbled up, were related. The third man wore a week or so worth of beard that grew in as black as his hair. Tattoos snaked up from beneath his collar and ran down over the backs of his muscular forearms and hands. The first man looked serious, the second appeared amused, and the last seemed… Troubled. Why did that immediately make me like him the most?

  He was wearing a baseball cap, and then I realized I recognized him, too. He was the baseball pitcher who hadn’t been drafted and went on to take the league by storm a couple years ago. Jack Kerrigan.

  The three huge men took one of the tables in the corner, and it was only as they were sitting that I realized a small child was trailing behind Kerrigan. The big pitcher gently lifted the boy and set him on the bench beside him.

  At a glance, I couldn’t imagine it was Kerrigan’s son. Kerrigan looked like some sort of dark-haired interpretation of the Thunder God. He was all wild power and lithe athleticism with rugged features. He was the embodiment of masculine capability. And then the boy…

  I felt my heart go out to the little guy, because I knew how kids could be. He was small, with the tiniest most cramped in shoulders I thought I’d ever seen. He was also already pulling out a little sketch pad and leaning down to draw.

  Someone snapped in my ear. I flinched, realizing that like most of the customers in the store, I’d stopped to gawk at the procession of male models that had just strolled in and sat down to eat like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  “I’m not paying you to stand around,” Tony said.

  “Honestly, my paycheck from you is like gas money. Tips pay my bills, Tony.”

  “Is that the sound of you volunteering to get off my payroll, then?” Tony was a thick set Italian without a hint of an accent or any sign of his heritage except for olive skin and a gorgeous head of dark, wavy hair.

  “That’s the sound of me getting back to work,” I sighed.

  Tony grunted his approval and let me rush off to greet the table of Greek gods.

  The men hardly looked up at me as I took their orders. Chris ordered a round of beers for them while his brother and the bearded one talked in low tones about something that sounded important.

  I brought them their drinks along with some coloring tools for the little boy. He looked at them, picked up the crayon packet, and then gave it a disdainful little shove toward the center of the table. I quirked an eyebrow. “Crayola is beneath you?”

 
“Too thick,” he explained.

  Chris nudged his brother, who was still talking to Kerrigan. “I’ve heard that before.”

  I gave him a look. Chris made a dismissive gesture at the menu, then smiled up at me in a “you know what, who cares?” kind of way. “Can you just pick out something that will fill up three very large men? Please and thank you.”

  “You don’t want—”

  “Do you mind?” the other man growled, turning to face me with the most terrifying glare I’d ever seen.

  I liked to think I had backbone, but in that moment, I was glad I didn’t because it would’ve slid itself right out of my ass and onto the floor. I turned, went to the computer, and plugged in their orders.

  “Asshole,” I muttered under my breath. I ordered something for the little boy I thought Griff would like. Grilled cheese, maybe? Then I plugged in one of our challenge pizzas for the three men. It was called the Gut Buster, and it consisted of three large pizza crusts combined together, quadruple the toppings, sauce, and cheese. To top it off, hot sauce was drizzled over the entire thing.

  It was utterly disgusting, and I hoped the jerk and his stuck-up ass would hate every bite.

  But Chris said to make sure they’d be full, and I couldn’t think of how ordering them an eight-pound pizza was being disobedient.

  “Why are you smiling at the computer like that?” Griff asked. I noticed there was something stuffed in his pocket that wasn’t there before. Whatever it was, it could wait, I decided.

  “Because sometimes it’s fun reminding people they aren’t the kings of the universe.”

  Griff scrunched up his face at me, then shook his head and headed back to his spot at the bar.

  It only took about two minutes passing for me to start re-thinking what I’d done.

  Within three minutes, I realized I might have possibly over-reacted by just a smidge. But hey, I had a short temper. He was lucky I didn’t toss a drink in his face for being an absolute dick when I was just trying to do my job.

  Tony came to check in with me. “They really ordered it?” he asked, looking at the table.

  “Yep,” I said shakily. I’d gone too far to admit the truth now. I just needed to hope the men didn’t complain, or I knew I’d be screwed.

  Then again, I thought if a woman was going to get screwed, they could do a lot worse than those three men. Except I’d already played the fantasy game of picking which one I liked. Mr. Beard, please and thank you. And while I was in fantasy land, I’d take a winning lottery ticket on the side.

  2

  Jack

  We were crammed into a little booth in a small restaurant on the outskirts of the city The place was out near a park I liked to do a little of my off-season exercise at.

  Damon Rose and his brother agreed to meet me here. We all knew what a circus it could be to go out in the more well-known spots in the city, so neither of them complained about passing up the five-star meal for a hole in the wall like this.

  I felt my eyes drifting to the girl who had taken our orders. At the moment, she was half bent over one of the touchscreen computers to tap in an order. Long legs clad in tight fitting leggings that left nothing to the imagination. Thick red hair that spilled out of a ponytail reaching just above her ass. And she had an adorable upturned nose with a smear of freckles on her pale face.

  But I wasn’t here for women. I looked to my son, Ben. He was working on another picture to join the tens of thousands he seemed to produce each month. The kid was only six, but he’d shown an intense interest for anything related to drawing pretty much since... Well, since I’d gotten into the league two years ago.

  I was all Ben had, and once I realized he might need more from me than I’d been giving him, I knew I needed to do something.

  That’s why I found myself in some run-down restaurant across from my agent and his brother.

  The moment I even floated the possibility of taking a year or two away from baseball, I knew Damon would be down my throat trying to change my mind. Sure enough, he’d even brought his brother, Chris, along.

  “...Could consider some sort of compromise,” Damon was saying.

  “It’s my son,” I said. I spared a glance for our waitress when she stopped to set our drinks down. The black t-shirt she was wearing sagged enough to give me a glimpse of milky white cleavage and the faint white line of her bra. I forced my eyes away.

  Focus, asshole.

  I thought I felt her eyes lingering on me before she headed back toward the bar to talk to a little kid who was sitting by himself. The kid looked about Ben’s age, and I wondered if the girl was his mom. She couldn’t be past her early twenties, and that would’ve made her almost as young as Ally was when she got pregnant with Ben.

  The thought of Ally always gave a bitter twist to my stomach, though, so I brought my attention back to Damon. “I can’t just leave him with some stranger all day and brush my hands of it.”

  Chris cut in like the two of them were playing good cop bad cop. “You never know. A nanny might be exactly what Ben needs.”

  “He needs me,” I said.

  Damon leaned in, tapping his fingertips on the table. “Just consider it. You’ve tried dragging him around to practices and games. Would it hurt to give it a few weeks at the most? If he doesn’t like it, then we can consider more extreme options.”

  “You’re only interested in your bank account, Damon. Skip pretending you're actually concerned about us.” I felt annoyed with both of them. I’d known Chris since college, and I did like the guy. I also knew Damon was the best in the business. But this wasn’t a business decision. Ben was my son, and he was—

  Shit. Where was Ben?

  He must’ve ducked under the table and headed off to the bathroom. More and more he’d gotten quiet—to the point where he would go to extremes to avoid even having to let me know he needed to pee.

  “Dammit,” I said under my breath. I went to get up. In my hurry, I bumped the table and tipped the fresh beer all over my pants.

  The waitress was rushing toward me with a handful of balled up napkins before I could react. I was about to move her aside to go after Ben, but I saw he’d been stopped by the kid at the bar. The kid was looking at Ben’s sketchbook and saying something animated as he pointed.

  “Oh I’m so sorry,” the waitress said.

  I felt my attention pulled to her as she crouched in front of me. She wasn’t seriously going to…

  Yep.

  She blotted the front of my pants a few times before it dawned on her that she was kneeling in front of me with her hand between my legs in front of a room full of stunned customers. She froze, hand a couple inches from me as her cheeks went a shade of red to match her hair.

  “I am so. So. Sorry.” She got up, dropping the napkins. She started half-dancing from foot to foot like she had to pee. “I get scatterbrained when it’s busy. And I’m really hot right now. Like I’m freaking drenched, it’s why-”

  Chris made a sputtering sound between laughter and choking. I shot him a look and found him bent over clutching his stomach. Damon was watching us with a glint of something mysterious in his eyes.

  “It’s fine.”

  The girl was removing one of the wristbands on her arm to show me that she’d been talking about how much she was sweating. Not whatever Chris Rose’s immature ass was cackling about from the booth. It probably should’ve been off-putting, but I found it refreshing. She looked completely frazzled and out of her element as she plucked off the other wrist band, mouth moving so fast and words spilling at such a rate that I couldn’t absorb it all.

  “It’s okay. Really,” I repeated.

  “Oh, God. Griff,” she said, turning toward the little boy Ben was talking to at the bar.

  “Griff” was putting on a sort of clinic for how to shoot straw wrappers at unsuspecting patrons while everyone was busy watching the waitress who had wiped the front of my pants with napkins.

  Ben gave his straw a forceful blow
, then turned with the biggest smile I’d seen on him in weeks to the boy she called Griff. The two boys high-fived, and at that moment, my feelings on hiring a nanny changed completely.

  “You’ve just got-” she said, reaching for my pants again. I looked down and saw a thick clump of napkin fuzz that had torn off from the moisture and stuck to my jeans. I raised an eyebrow at the woman, and she jerked her hand back, nodding rapidly and backing away. “I should go check on your order, actually.”

  3

  Nola

  After particularly stressful shifts of work, I’d sometimes have nightmares about the restaurant. They were usually the kind where I’d realize I forgot to put in several orders for half an hour. The dream would kick off as I noticed my customers watching me expectantly, then I’d feel the soul-crushing dread of knowing I needed to go tell them all it was going to be another twenty minutes before their food came because I was a ditz.

  But last night, the familiar nightmare had an unfamiliar twist.

  This time, I saw a giant wave of water splash into Jack Kerrigan’s pants. Being the genius I am in my dreams, I decided I needed to help him take his pants off. So I got on my knees in the middle of the restaurant and started tugging his pants down, then his underwear...

  Yeah. It turns out some latent part of my consciousness was apparently highly turned on by the idea of publicly going down on Jack Kerrigan. Because, you know, that was totally, completely normal.