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

  I was sitting up in my bed with the sheets bunched around me, still breathing heavily as I pushed the last remnants of the dream from my mind.

  God. I was probably still thinking about him because of the way the men had been looking at me after the ordeal. Jack had gathered his adorable little son, gone back to the table, and then the three men had launched into a quiet but urgent conversation punctuated by occasional glances my way.

  They didn’t even complain when the Gut Buster arrived, and I was shocked that the men—mostly Chris and Jack—seemed to take it as a challenge and actually finished more of the pizza than I’d ever seen anyone manage.

  The worst part was when they’d called my boss over at the end and, once again, the whole group had glanced my way several times. But Tony gave no sign of wanting to murder me afterwards, so my initial fear that they were getting me fired hadn’t turned out to be true.

  And now it was just another day. No more crazy run-ins with gorgeous celebrities. In fact, it was highly likely that I’d go the entire remainder of my life without even brushing elbows with a single man as magnetic as Jack Kerrigan had been. I mean, I’d like to publicly put it on record that under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t lack the awareness to start rubbing at a customer’s crotch with napkins. But Jack and his muscles, tattoos, and dreamy eyes had scrambled my brains temporarily.

  None of that mattered now, I guessed. The fun was over. Some little slice of an exciting, adventurous life had overlapped with mine for the briefest of moments, and now it had passed. It was like a page from someone else’s book had been torn out and accidentally fluttered into the mundane tale of work and work and struggle that was mine.

  I sighed dramatically and threw the sheets off myself. Birds were chirping outside because they didn’t have to pay rent or work at dead-end jobs just to afford boxes of macaroni and cheese. Assholes.

  I slid out of bed, flopping to the floor and debating whether I actually wanted to shower and get ready or if I could just roll into work this morning looking a little rough around the edges.

  Eventually, I voted for hygiene. God knew I got way too sweaty at the sauna that was my work to pass up showers, as tempting as it might be.

  I heard Griff clanking around in the kitchen while I showered, which was a bad sign. He knew he wasn’t supposed to get his own breakfast, but the little bastard liked to wait until he heard the shower running to pull stunts. I had a feeling I’d come out to find a massive mess, but my mind was still stuck on the men from last night.

  I wondered what they’d talked about with so much interest after Jack and I’s encounter. I wondered why they had called my boss over and what they’d said, because Tony wouldn’t even give me a clue when I grilled him later.

  I was toweling off to the background sounds of something breaking in the kitchen—Griff—when I realized I’d missed a call during my shower. I picked up the phone and played the voicemail. Maybe Tony just hadn’t had the balls to fire me in person, and this was the end of my employment.

  With a sinking in my stomach, I played the message.

  The deep, rich voice was not Tony’s, though. “This is Damon Rose. You were our waitress last night, and I have an interesting opportunity to talk to you about. Meet me at Rose Athletic Tower in Manhattan this evening if you’re interested. Seven P.M.” The phone clicked.

  Oh, no. I’d seen this movie. Rich guy so gorgeous it’s almost scary. Suits and ties. Clandestine meeting at a fancy building in New York at night? This was totally going to end up with me wearing a white mask, a black robe, and nothing underneath while some electronic music played in the background, wasn’t it?

  “Griff!” I yelled through the door. “I’m getting a babysitter for tonight, and if you scare this one off, the only one left will be Miss Nancy from down the hall.”

  “Not her!” Griff shouted back his voice muffled by the thin walls of our apartment.

  “Then try behaving for once!”

  I took his silence as grudging acceptance and looked at my phone again.

  Damon had a wedding ring on. And the whole world knew Chris Rose was a newlywed, too. So maybe I was just being optomisitc. Maybe it was something else. I chewed the nail of my index finger, bouncing a little on my feet.

  Fuuuck. I was going to do this, wasn’t I?

  4

  Nola

  I’d hoped to have time to change out of my uniform and put something nice on for my meeting at Rose Athletic. Thanks to Griff, the little monster who had “made one of those science experiment volcanos on the kitchen counter” within an hour of his babysitter showing, I had to swing by home first. So I was still feeling gross, underdressed, and completely confused when I took a seat at a long conference table on the top floor of Rose Athletic.

  Damon Rose himself was directly across from me with Chris and Jack on either side. The men had looked intimidating in my restaurant but seeing them more in their element just amplified the effect.

  I felt like a child, and I tried to sit up a little straighter just to avoid coming off as one, too.

  “So…” I said. “Please tell me this isn’t like some kind of interview for a porn video.”

  Chris raised an eyebrow and looked to Jack, who was watching me with a strange intensity.

  “Actually,” Damon said. “We want to hire you to be Jack’s nanny. For his son.”

  “Oh,” I said. “A nanny?”

  Jack cut in. “I saw that you take care of your own kid and—”

  “Griff is my little brother. My parents they—” a lump rose in my throat and I decided to just look down and shake my head instead of explaining.

  There was a brief pause. “All the same,” Jack continued. “I was planning to step away from baseball as long as I needed to help my son, Ben. He’s been withdrawing. I thought maybe more time with him would help, but then I saw him with your brother last night. I want you to watch him for me, but I also want you to bring your brother along when you can.”

  Now it was my eyebrows that climbed my forehead. “There’s really no way I could get the time off work.”

  Chris made a dismissive sound. “Name your price. If Jack walks away from baseball, my dear brother here is going to lose millions. And right now, you’re the only ledge he has to grab. I’m pretty sure he’ll pay you enough to get you out of waiting tables.”

  Damon gave him an annoyed look. “Thanks for convincing her she can squeeze as much money out of me as she wants.”

  Chris shrugged. “Consider it a consultant’s fee for bringing me into this mess.”

  “Well,” I said. “I make minimum wage for servers plus tips right now. My rent is…” I quietly did the math, trying to figure out how much I’d need to replace my income. “I’d need at least, I don’t know, a thousand a month?”

  The three men shared a look.

  Jack leaned forward. “I’ll pay you ten thousand a month.”

  Chris tilted his head. “You know my brother was going to cover it, right?”

  Jack shook his head. “This is for Ben. I’ll pay whatever she needs.”

  A strange sensation spread through me like warmth or excitement. Something about the way this Jack guy talked to me and acted made me feel like I was under his wing somehow. I felt safe. It might’ve been the first time since my parents died that I felt like I wasn’t completely and totally alone in trying to get through everything.

  With a rush of mortification, I realized my eyes were watering. I quickly wiped at my eyes, then nodded. “Ten thousand should cover the basics.”

  And before I knew it, I was shaking hands with the men. Jack took my hand last, and he placed his other hand on mine. It was rough and hard, but warm. He met my eyes. “Thank you,” he said.

  Why did I feel like I’d just gotten so far in over my head that I’d never see the surface again?

  5

  Jack

  My salary and endorsement deals meant I could essentially take my pick of the living spaces Manhattan had
to offer. I’d eventually decided to put us up in a nice apartment in a calmer part of the city. We gave up a little bit of the extra space and luxuries some of the more sought-after areas offered, but it meant Ben was zoned for a more normal school where I thought he’d have a better shot of making friends.

  Assuming he ever decided to give that a shot, at least.

  Ben hadn’t turned out the way I expected. We didn’t spend our afternoons playing catch and talking about his favorite athletes. Instead, I’d learned to crudely draw and to appreciate his passion for art. It was one of the only ways to spend meaningful time with my little guy, so I made it work as well as I could.

  Ben was across from me with his head down and his hand scribbling away. One of his favorite things to draw were birds. Originally, he’d tried to get them as realistic as was possible in his talented, six-year-old hands. Over time, it was more common for him to draw a sort of cartoon representation and try to make a humorous scene. Maybe the bird was pushing its brother out of the nest, trying to get into a trash can, or any other nonsense he could dream up.

  I leaned back, evaluating my own work. As sad as it was, Ben was twice the artist I was. I’d drawn a penguin pushing his friend in the water while a killer whale fin poked up from the waves. I showed Ben, hoping to at least get a grin from him.

  He tilted his head, stopping what he was doing long enough to point at my penguin. “Penguins have beaks. That’s a dog’s nose.”

  I glanced down. I knew penguins had beaks. I wouldn’t have—

  Oh. Yeah. I was in the middle of erasing and trying to fix my mistake when the doorbell rang. Ben didn’t look up, but his hand went still. I patted the top of his head. “It’s alright, bud. Just the nanny. Remember we talked about it? I’ll be here the whole time until we know she’s someone we can trust.”

  After a moment, Ben resumed his work.

  I opened the door and found the little waitress from a few nights ago standing outside my door. The last time I’d seen her had been in Damon’s conference room.

  I wasn’t proud of it, but the couple days since had given me more than enough time for my mind to wander. Try as I might, I hadn’t been able to completely block out the fact that I was attracted to the woman. Ben came before anything else, but I was still a man. And Nola, well… Nola was exactly the kind of woman I probably didn’t need distracting me at a time like this.

  Her thick red hair was done into two intricate braids along the sides of her head that she twirled together and wore over one shoulder. She was in a simple gray t-shirt and jeans, but even the loose clothing couldn’t hide the wide swell of her hips and the shapeliness of her legs. I dragged my eyes to hers, which was only slightly less distracting.

  She looked nervous as hell—like a baby doe who had wandered into a bear’s den and been told to make herself comfortable. I tried to convince myself I wasn’t the bear she feared, but with the way my heart was pounding at the sight of her, I wasn’t completely convinced.

  “You didn’t bring Griff?”

  Nola pursed her lips, then shook her head. She was afraid to say whatever she was about to say, I gathered.

  I nodded, saving her the need to explain. I’d been so preoccupied with making sure I could trust her with Ben that I hadn’t even stopped to think how it might feel for her. What kind of big sister would bring her little brother to a strange man’s house in an area she wasn’t familiar with?

  Trust goes both ways, dumbass.

  I gestured for her to come in, which seemed to provoke a breath of relief from her.

  “This place is beautiful,” she said tightly. Her hands were clutched in front of her waist around a sweater she was squeezing like a life jacket. “You live here?” She blinked, shaking her head. “Sorry. I mean, obviously you—”

  “This is where Ben likes to draw,” I said, leading her through the living room toward the small bonus room lined with windows where we stored all his art supplies. Ben’s hand stopped working on the picture when Nola and I entered the room.

  “Wow,” she said, moving toward him and crouching with her hands on her thighs. “You know I used to love drawing when I was younger. At some point I got out of the habit.”

  “What do you like to draw?” Ben asked.

  I leaned against the wall, watching them with interest. Ben didn’t usually say even that much to strangers, and I felt a cautious rush of optimism to hear him talk to her.

  “Girly stuff,” Nola admitted, sliding a paper over to herself and grabbing a purple crayon. “Like this…” She went quiet for a few moments and swirled the crayon around, bringing a twisting vine and a delicate little flower to life.

  Ben studied her work, then tapped the vine. “This kind of flower has thorns.”

  With a touch of amusement, I wondered when I’d need to teach him that most pretty things did.

  Nola’s head pulled back slightly and she raised her eyebrows at him. “You’re really observant, aren’t you? That’s probably why you’re such a good artist. A real artist notices things other people don’t. Like you ask the average person to draw an ant and they don’t even know how many legs they have, but I bet—”

  “Six,” he said with a guilty little smile.

  Nola laughed. “Wow.” She turned her head towards me. “He’s incredible.”

  Ben was smiling to himself, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, I found myself grinning along with them.

  Nola continued testing Ben as his smile and self-satisfaction ballooned.

  “How many toes does an elephant have on each foot?”

  “Five. But the back feet only have four toenails.”

  “But I bet you couldn’t draw the bottom of an elephant’s foot, could you?”

  Ben scrunched up his face and pushed the paper he’d been working on out of the way. He slid another in front of himself and started scribbling with determination. Nola stole a look at me and we both seemed to catch ourselves smiling at the same time.

  I cleared my throat suddenly. “I’m going to grab a drink. Do you want anything?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll come back to check your work in a couple minutes, Ben. And this better be one of those four nail feet, because I want to see if you know which one doesn’t have a nail.”

  She followed me to the kitchen where she pulled out a barstool and sat down. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “What?” I asked. I’d pulled a bag of coffee grounds out of the cabinet and set it down between us. “No.” I shook my head. “No, you’re doing well.”

  I hadn’t realized how tight she’d been until she relaxed a little, sinking into the counter as she rested on her elbows. “He’s adorable, by the way.”

  So are you. I turned my back to make the coffee, but also so I could close my eyes and wince. I could feel where this was going, and I needed to put a stop to it as soon as possible. I just needed to stop thinking of her as a woman. Maybe if I imagined she was some sort of precision-built machine, I’d be able to stop worrying I was going to try to sleep with her.

  I chanced a look over my shoulder and found her chewing her nail while twirling one of those orange-red braids with her other hand.

  No. The robot approach wasn’t going to work, either.

  “How do you like it?” I asked once I’d poured her cup of coffee.

  She met my eyes, looking startled. “Um, I—”

  I realized I wasn’t actually holding the coffee. In fact, I’d just turned toward her, planted both palms on the counter, and demanded to know how she liked it in a gruff voice.

  “Your coffee, I mean.”

  Nola’s cheeks went bright red. “Like a child,” she said, laughing at herself. “A lot of sugar and a lot of cream. If it tastes like a dessert that met coffee at a conference once a long time ago, then we’re good.”

  I nodded. I needed to stop feeling like I wanted to smile. I wasn’t the smiling type of guy, but that had always felt like something that came naturally to me. In fact, I
was usually reminding myself to smile once in a while so I wouldn’t scare people. For some reason, I felt like my goddamn mouth was malfunctioning around Nola. Every time she spoke, it was trying to pull up at the corners.

  With an effort, I crafted a typical Jack Kerrigan glare and planted it firmly on my face before I turned and gave her the coffee. “That was four sugars.”

  “Gonna need two more,” Nola admitted.

  I raised an eyebrow, then pushed the box of sugar packets to her. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she pulled out four and emptied them into her cup, stirred, and sipped. She made a face like it still wasn’t to her liking but smiled and sipped politely anyway.

  I leaned against the counter, drinking from my own cup. Our eyes met, and she smiled again into the brim of her mug. The glare I’d been holding as desperately as a lifeline faltered.

  Fuck, I was in trouble.

  6

  Nola

  I tugged on the cord of the “open” sign in the front window of the restaurant, killing the neon light. I hopped down from the booth and dusted a few hours’ worth of flour, crumbs, spilled sauce, and whatever else I was wearing from the front of my shirt.

  Griff was in one of the corner booths working on a series of drawings, which was so far beyond abnormal for him that I’d asked Tony to borrow a thermometer. But my little brother wasn’t sick, he was just being abnormally non-destructive for once.

  Everyone else had left, leaving me with the final task of mopping up before I could officially call it a night.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when there was a sudden, urgent tapping at the glass of the front door. I spun and let out a sigh of relief to see it was just my idiot friends.

  I went to unlock the door and let them in.