Billionaires On the Beach: The Anderson Brothers

by Elizabeth Lennox

  “Gee, it must suck to get bored with all that jet setting.”

  “Sarcasm is a very unattractive trait in a nanny. I’d hate to have to take away points on your reference.”

  “It’s not a points system. It’s positive or negative.”

  “So how do you want that to look?”

  “I think sarcasm is probably more acceptable than kissing the boss. I’m sorry about that.”

  “I’m teasing about your reference, you know that, right? I’m not being an actual asshole.”

  “That’s debatable, Wyatt,” she said with an eye roll.

  They spent the evening watching the Bond marathon and eating popcorn flavored with her special toffee and sea salt topping and then digging into a pint of Vanessa’s Luscious Licks. During a commercial, Laine checked her phone.

  “The Wi-Fi’s out.”

  “It’s the storm. Use your data.”

  “I’m a data miser. Oh, hell, that doesn’t work either. No Internet? It’s like we’re in a horror movie,” she joked.

  “I’ll protect you.”

  “No you won’t. You’ll climb up on the roof!”

  “Not in this storm.”

  “Is it still storming?” she asked, looking over her shoulder to see out the window. It was totally black outside and rain lashed the windows.

  “Were you that into the movie? Yes, it’s a hell of a storm. I’m surprised we still have electricity. I guess that generator’s good for something after all. But don’t tell Sloan I said he was right about it.”

  “Well, I’m glad we still have power. I guess I was just cozy watching the movie. This is the softest blanket ever.” Laine nestled into the pale blue throw.

  “Cashmere,” he shrugged. “Glad you like it.”

  “I’m freezing.”

  “It’s summer. How are you freezing?”

  “I don’t know. My hands and feet are always cold.”

  Wyatt reached under the blanket and grabbed her foot. “Hey!” she protested, but he started rubbing her foot, working his thumb in slow circles into her instep.

  “Warming up?”

  “Uh, yeah.” She drew her foot away, face flaming. She was warming up in a lot of areas from his touch and didn’t intend for him to know about it. “I’m fine. I’ll go get socks if I’m still cold.” Laine tucked her feet under her and sat up.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  “We’re not even in a relationship, so don’t get all we-need-to-talk on me, nanny,” he teased.

  “It was unprofessional of me to kiss you and I won’t make excuses. No more kissing. No more touching of any kind. I want to be successful at this job and help you complete your sentence without problems. I work for you and make you food. I’m going to go to bed now. I don’t think watching movies together—it’s not appropriate.”

  “You’re here to entertain me and keep me sane. That’s exactly what we should be doing. Look, I won’t sexually harass you, I promise. Stay and watch the movie.”

  “No, thanks. I’m tired, I’ll just go to bed.”

  “It’s nine-thirty. You’re not in fifth grade,” he said. She hurried up to her room, sat shivering on her bed watching the storm out the window, wondering how she got into this mess of being so attracted to her boss.

  Chapter 6

  Wyatt was drinking a green juice and waiting for Laine by six in the morning. “Internet’s still down,” he explained, “I’m not much good at telecommuting by carrier pigeon, so it looks like I have the day off. Normally I’d go surfing but since I’m under house arrest, I have to sit here. What can we do for fun?”

  “I, uh, have a really good Sudoku app you could try while I make breakfast,” she mumbled.

  “Sudoku app? Really? And I don’t want breakfast. I had juice. I’m bored!”

  “So read a book, dude. I want some toast. I’ll entertain you in ten minutes. After I’ve had coffee.”

  “Coffee? That’s artificial energy for people who are deprived of adrenaline by their pathetic lives. You need to live a little! Jump out of a plane! Go zip lining! Cliff diving—there’s a great place in Jamaica for first-timers.”

  “I like coffee. I have no intention of diving off a cliff anywhere. If you can’t entertain yourself for the next ten minutes, go do somersaults in the backyard and I’ll be there after my coffee to cheer you on,” she offered.

  “You’re grumpy in the mornings.”

  “Yes, I am. Somersaults—go!” she said with a giggle, starting the coffee maker.

  “I’m not playing Sudoku.”

  “I can teach you how. It’s not that intimidating once you know how the puzzles are constructed.”

  “You know if being a nanny doesn’t work out, dentists could employ you to provide drug free anesthesia to their patients,” he teased. How in the world was a hot girl so interested in number puzzles?

  Wyatt didn’t go in the backyard because it was still raining. He paced back and forth in the kitchen like a caged animal while she sipped coffee at the table and checked her phone and probably did fourteen Sudokus or something.

  “I’m not going to hurry,” she teased, not looking up, “Here, check this one out. It’s a six pane Sudoku from the extreme category. I already leveled up from the expert and next is excruciating!”

  “Oh, Lord. Do all the levels start with ‘ex’?”

  “Yeah. It’s intense. They used some of these at the competition in Philadelphia. I keep hoping they’ll have a Sudoku Con, like comic con but with puzzles and logic.”

  “I know about ComicCon because the girl who played Harley Quinn is really hot.”

  “Of course you do. It’s like we speak different languages,” she deadpanned, finishing her coffee, “How about we start you off with a board game?”

  “Like, what, Monopoly?”

  “We can do better than that. I’m going to run into town and I’ll be right back. Do you like cooperative games like Pandemic or are you a Battleship guy?

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Just trust me,” she said, beaming as she raced up to change clothes.

  She was excited. About board games. He sighed. Either she had the dullest life possible or she got excited even over small things—in which case he couldn’t help contemplating how glass shattering her orgasmic screams could be if he ever got in her pants. True, he wasn’t actively trying to seduce her—she would have been his in minutes—but he wasn’t exactly not trying either.

  While she was gone, he made frustrating phone calls to Internet service providers and his cell phone carrier and was put on indefinite hold in both cases. He resolved to sell that wireless company as soon as his service was back up. Sloan had been right again and wireless communications were a customer service nightmare investment-wise. He went down to the gym in the basement and worked out. Halfway through his second set of pull-ups, he heard the front door and dropped to his feet, toweling off. Wyatt took the stairs two at a time, ready to see her. To see what she’d picked up. Obviously, not her.

  Laine was in the hall, carrying a teetering tower of stacked carrier bags, a bag hanging from each arm. He scooped the stack out of her hands and carried it to the sitting room where they’d watched TV the night before. She dumped the bags in a chair and started unpacking what he’d carried. Box after box of board games, the geeky ones with dwarves on the covers.

  “I take it Sloan gave you an expense account,” he said wryly.

  “There’s a credit card. I didn’t max it out. Anything you don’t want I can return. It was fun, I’m not gonna lie. Which one do you want to try first?”

  “Uh, none of them. This isn’t my idea of fun. It takes something pretty extreme—and I do NOT mean extreme Sudoku—to get me excited.”

  “Okay, high stakes it is,” she grinned and unpacked a cartoonish box of Operation. “Let’s see how steady your hands are, Mr. Excitement.”

  Wyatt grimaced at her as she set up the game, putting tiny plastic bits in narrow slots and loading
batteries in the back. She held out a pair of tweezers to him, attached by a short red cord to the ridiculous cardboard shape of a man. He removed the breadbasket easily, and she took a turn at expertly extracting the Adam’s apple. On his turn, as she counted up her play money, Wyatt eased the tweezer blades in to retrieve the writer’s cramp and brushed the edge of the slot. A loud buzzer sounded, startling him.

  “Fuck!” he said, “What the hell?”

  “You failed!” she crowed. “My turn.”

  “Jesus, that rattled my teeth.”

  “How’s your pulse now?” she teased, “Got any adrenaline pumping over some good old fashioned competition? Maybe got your heart pounding?”

  “It just startled me, that’s all. It’s a stupid game,” he said.

  “Now who’s grouchy in the morning?” she said. “And since I removed writer’s cramp, I get, let’s see…how much money?”

  “It’s fake money. Give me the damn tweezers,” he said, furrowing his brow in concentration. He was not going to let the nanny beat him at some ridiculous kids’ game.

  He successfully snagged the spare ribs but the wishbone defeated him and he made the board buzz and jar again, the patient’s nose flashing its red bulb indignantly. “Fine, you finish it. Operation is not my game,” he declared. “Too childish.”

  “It takes practice. I used to play this on the road with the kids I babysat. We had this and Yahtzee, which is basically poker.”

  “Sounds fascinating,” he said. “So you mind telling me why the patient in this game is dickless? It’s clearly supposed to be a guy, but he’s totally neutered.”

  “It’s a children’s board game. Besides, it’s about removing imaginary body parts like a broken heart, so it’s hardly going to be anatomically accurate. I don’t think I’d want to buy a game for a kid I was nannying and open it up and find out the cartoon dude had testicles. That’s not a conversation for a seven-year-old’s rainy afternoon unless I want to get fired.”

  “So nannying is strictly testicle free?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “What else do you have we could do?” he asked.

  “Chinese checkers?”

  “I have been to China many times and have never seen anyone play that. Next.”

  “Maybe you’re not hanging out in the cool gamer circles,” she teased. “How about Cards Against Humanity? I’ve never played it because I play games with, like, eleven year olds, but Vanessa played it on a blind date once and said it was really funny but evil.”

  “That sounds at least slightly more entertaining,” he conceded, as she practically bounced with enthusiasm, “Is this like the naughtiest thing you’ve ever done?”

  “No. I did smoke a cigarette once when I was twelve. We were in Sweden and my parents were playing some kind of weird festival and half the people there were mad that it wasn’t ABBA instead of them, it was hysterical. I smoked a cigarette and tried to kiss one of the roadies. He was about forty and freaked out and left me the entire pack of cigarettes, probably hoping never to see me again.”

  “That’s it? That’s your naughtiest thing?”

  “What’s yours? Getting a blow job from some Middle Eastern princess while bungee jumping in the middle of a tornado?” she asked. He laughed.

  “How would that even work? I’m sure that even my impressive dick would be hard to hold on to while bungee jumping. And I think I might get hurt in that scenario…no. That was really imaginative, though, Laine. I didn’t know your Sudoku mind worked like that.”

  “So I’m not going to be impressed?”

  “With my stories? I think you will be. I mean, I am a demigod.”

  “Like the Rock in Moana? The Disney movie?”

  “No idea what you’re talking about. Anyway, when I was in college, I was at a party—”

  “Is this a keg stand story? Or a three way story? Because I know Vanessa and she’s done all that. It’s going to take more to fascinate my cynical little mind than that.”

  “And here I thought you were all kittens, hot tea and crossword puzzles. I guess you live a pretty full vicarious life through your friend.”

  “Yeah. So give me a good story.”

  “Fine. I did a year at Cambridge and when I was up in London one week, I took a girl to the Tate and we tried to break in to the employees’ only area and nearly got arrested. I’m never allowed in the Tate Modern again.”

  “What were you trying to find? The vending machine?”

  “I’d heard they had dirty pictures, photos in the vault that they didn’t display. We were looking for high class porn.”

  “There’s this new thing called the Internet. Free porn everywhere, so why bother?”

  “It was the fun of it, the breaking and entering, going someplace forbidden, that sort of thing. The conspiracy feeling of being partners in crime.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve been skinny dipping in the Dead Sea and one time I got in a fight with a girlfriend on board her dad’s yacht and she shoved me off. I had to swim for it! If that doesn’t impress you, I also have backstage access at Aerosmith so I’ve gone out for waffles and shit with the boys in the band.”

  “Name dropping won’t impress me.”

  “You don’t like Aerosmith?”

  “Of course, I do. Everyone does. I used to sing Crazy in the shower when I was a kid, but my parents didn’t exactly approve.”

  “They were raising you in a bus and didn’t approve of Steven Tyler?”

  “Yeah, they let me watch whatever, but they were pretty serious about music and wanting me to appreciate it.”

  “What, early disco?”

  “No, the classics, Elvis, Patsy Cline, Count Basie. They’re not stupid, my parents, they just didn’t know there was any effort necessary in raising a child. The only thing they really taught me besides independence was about music.”

  “Did you ever want to sing?”

  “No. I wanted to read and do puzzles and be quiet and know what to expect from day to day and that wasn’t on the menu until I went to live with my aunt.”

  “Let me guess, you weren’t one for sneaking out?”

  “No, it wasn’t necessary. I had plenty of unsupervised years behind me. So I was happy to have a home and a curfew.”

  “I was always skirting my curfew, but my parents were serious about making sure we didn’t get into any real trouble. So I wanted to be someplace unobserved. I was trying the good booze by the time I was fourteen.”

  “I don’t think underage drinking is that exciting.”

  “I did lots of stuff. I zip lined in Kuala Lumpur between the Patronus Towers. I base jumped off the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and had to pay a king’s ransom to stay out of jail for that one, but it was the most incredible rush. Here I have a video.” He showed her the film on his phone. She smirked at the phone.

  “Is it going to be twenty minutes of you bitching about the heat?”

  “I had to climb for nearly an hour to get up there! And no, it cuts to the jump pretty quick,” he grinned. He watched her view the video and when she caught her breath at the dizzying height, the fast drop, he felt a sort of contact high from sharing it. He’d shown that video to hundreds of people, but he’d never felt that rush from it. When her eyes met his, dazzled and a little uneasy, he leaned in to kiss her.

  She shook her head, handed back his phone. “No kissing, remember. So, I’m going to go make something to eat. Late lunch or early supper. You decide which game to play next.” She rushed off.

  Wyatt checked his voicemails and determined the Internet was still off, and took a shower. When he returned to the kitchen, it was with his GoPro.

  “Tell me what you’re doing?” he said. She looked up from chopping figs.

  “Hey, what’s with the camera? Aren’t you only supposed to whip those out when you’re doing a backflip off a building?”

  “This is just as exciting,” he said with a self-conscious eye roll to hide his interest in watchi
ng her cook.

  She looked suddenly shy standing there. “Come on,” he urged. “You used to go onstage when you were three. Show me you’ve got the performing genes, Jaz.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said in mock seriousness, pointing at him with the knife blade, “My name is Laine.”

  “Okay,” he turned the camera on himself, “Hello, Wyatt Anderson here, and this is Laine Maguire. Laine, tell me what you’re cooking today,” he prompted.

  “I’m chopping figs for the salad and I’m roasting snapper and I’m going to put lemon caper butter sauce on it. You can watch me make the sauce.”

  “Okay,” he lowered the camera. “But can you make it more exciting? Sexier?”

  “Okay,” she said mischievously.

  She went into the butler’s pantry and took the kitchen shears to her t-shirt, slicing out the neckline and cropping off the bottom, coming out with the open neckline yanked down off one shoulder and her dark hair tousled and loose. “Better?” she asked. He nodded, staring.

  “I’ve got a saucepan and I’m going to combine the butter and olive oil over medium heat. Now I’m placing the fish in the pan and I’m going to cook it for six minutes…” she trailed off, washed her hands and poured herself a glass of wine. “Here,” she took a sip and offered him the glass, “You’re going to have to join me if we’re doing an amateur cooking show. I’ll have to teach you. Now take off your shirt.”

  He propped the GoPro up on a stack of cookbooks and pointed it at her. He peeled his shirt off. She looked so saucy in that cut up t-shirt that he was having trouble concentrating. Hopefully she wouldn’t ask him to do anything too complicated.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Now, turn the fish with that spatula.”

  “Ok, consider it done.”

  “Good, then feel the capers.”

  “Feel them?”

  “You want your capers to be firm and juicy for that briny flavor,” she said in a voice intentionally low and sexy. He felt a flare of heat slide down his stomach and stiffen his cock.

  “How firm? Like blueberries?” he asked, rolling a caper between his finger and thumb.