by Kira Blakely
I climb out of bed, my feet still sore as they strike the hardwood floor, and I shuffle into the same clothes I wore yesterday, which I cleaned and dried last night. I also completely drowned myself in some delicious ginger chicken soup. Oh, my god. Oh, my god, Lucas can cook.
I head downstairs and the itinerary is waiting for me, printed on a crisp sheet of paper, right in the center of the kitchen table.
6: Make lunches and prep clothes for kids.
6:30: Wake kids, get them all set up, and drive them to Fallaway Peak Elementary and Middle Schools. My keys are on the table by the front door. Take the black Jeep in the driveway.
8: Kids need to be at school by this time.
8:30-12: Take a break!
12: Pick up Madison, she’s getting a half day.
12-2: Entertain Madison, perform any outstanding chores—cleaning, laundry, and figure out dinner. We eat home-cooked around here. The fridge is fully stocked.
3: Pick up Charlie.
3-5: Prep and cook dinner.
6: Get Maddy a bath drawn and supervise from a distance.
After 6: Charlie needs to be doing his homework, and you need to clean up from dinner. We don’t tolerate dirty dishes in this house.
7: Maddy’s bedtime. She wants to hear stories. You can make one up or read from where I left off in Harry Potter.
7-10: Rest, light cleaning, whatever you want to do if everything has been done.
10: Charlie’s bedtime. And you’re officially off the clock until six tomorrow.
Just reading the itinerary makes me tired.
The house is dark and quiet, and I’m sure Lucas must have already left the house or be working in his office. Why else would he print out an itinerary and disappear, instead of guiding me through anything?
Oh well. It doesn’t matter. Sink or swim, Sofia. Do what the real Maggie would do and make it work. You have to.
Pearly, chill gray sunlight is only just beginning to filter through the windows of the cabin as I creep into Madison and Charlie’s rooms, fishing out nice, appropriate school clothes. I head back downstairs and make simple lunches: carrot sticks, peanut butter and jelly, little bags of pretzels. The schedule is packed tight to the gills, and I’m barely finished when the clock chimes seven and it’s time to wake the kids up. But I feel good. I feel accomplished.
I can do this.
Maybe I can keep this job.
I gently nudge Charlie awake. His baleful blue gaze turns to me with pure hatred and he says, “Oh. It’s you.”
“Hey, Charlie,” I whisper. “It’s time for school, buddy.”
“Joy,” he grumbles, monotonous. “Can you get out of here while I get dressed?”
I tell him I already picked out his clothes and gesture to where they’re folded at the foot of the bed. He scoffs and wrinkles his nose at me.
“Do you want me to ever have friends?” he asks, seeming genuinely concerned.
“Yes?”
“Please, just get out. I’m not five. I can pick my own clothes.”
I purse my lips and obey his wishes, but when I come back in a few minutes, he’s asleep in bed again. I groan and shake him awake.
“Uuuugh!” he cries without opening his eyes.
“Uuuugh to you, too,” I say. “Get up, Charlie.”
“All right! Fine!”
The five-year-old is easier to handle. She eats her breakfast dutifully. Charlie won’t touch it. She puts on the dress and tights I laid out. She gets in the car and buckles her damn self in. I drop her off at the elementary school, and now, running late by a few minutes, I get Charlie to the middle school down the street.
But when we park, he won’t get out of the car. He stares out the window like those front doors lead to a prison, to the gallows.
“Please get out, Charlie,” I beg him. “Look, man. I really need this job. I want to impress your dad. And if he gets a call because you’re late on my first day, if I can’t even get you out of the car, what am I going to do?”
His eyes grimly flash to mine in the rearview mirror. He doesn’t look like he cares what the fuck happens to me.
“Please,” I add.
“I don’t want to. I feel sick. I want to go home.”
“You feel sick right now?”
“Yeah.”
He looks fine. “Charlie, please.”
“I told you, I’m sick. I need to go back home, and if you don’t take me—”
“I’ll give you twenty bucks,” I plead. “Right now, to get out of the car and go through those doors.”
Charlie grimaces, nods, and stretches out an open palm. With molars gritted together, I pass him one of the twenties in my stack, and he climbs out of the Jeep at 7:10. Not bad. Not bad for a first day.
Actually, it’s only been the first hour of my first day. Charlie said it and I have to agree: Uuuugh.
Parked and sitting in this black Jeep outside of Fallaway Peak Middle School, I get my first chance to count the stack of cash Lucas left for me this morning.
My eyes bulge wider and wider as I shuffle through bill after bill after bill, counting upward in continuing disbelief.
Twenty-five twenties. Holy shit. Five hundred dollars and a place to stay for the week. Free food. Lucas Gray is truly an angel. Knowing that I have a few free hours in my itinerary now, I get directions to Fallaway Peaks Center, a crummy strip mall, and I buy myself fresh clothes.
I change into them, selecting warm, wool-lined white leggings, a floral blouse, and a long pink duster. I gather my unruly blond curls up into a white scarf embossed with pink roses, securing it into a Rosie the Riveter style knot. I can’t have Lucas thinking I only have one pair of jeans and one shirt, though most of them are still in the backseat of my impounded Honda.
It’s after nine when I return to the cabin off the highway, the one in the forest-hemmed neighborhood of beautiful cottages. I enter the electronic alarm code and let myself into the house, where I have less than an hour to familiarize myself with my new home, for the next two days, anyway. Then it’s back to work.
I have to pick up Maddy at noon, and from then on, it’s nonstop activity.
I don’t get another second alone until after Madison is in bed, and I’m able to start the dishes, which wait for me, stacked in the sink, still caked in fish grease from the salmon and rice that I made. My fingers are slick with juice from cutting and bagging the remaining salmon, and I turn on the miniature television next to the sink with my elbow, looking for something to pass the time.
It’s already set on local news, and I hesitate but let it play.
“Yesterday evening, law enforcement found an abandoned vehicle on the side of Route 16. This vehicle appears to belong to a woman, Sofia Marshall, who is wanted for insurance fraud. If you have information about her whereabouts, please contact your local police.”
My entire body goes cold. I freeze and stand there, fishy hands still poised over the sink.
The front door closes in the foyer, and I snap out of my daze. I scurry to switch off the television with my elbow. I hadn’t even realized I was rooted to the spot in absolute fear.
Lucas fills the kitchen doorway as he enters the room, dressed in tight blue jeans and a black T-shirt that hugs his biceps and abdominals. His hair is rumpled sideways, like it’s windy outside, and his dark eyes are similarly invigorated, but maybe that’s because he’s looking at me. I can’t help but notice how his gaze slides along my curves, thickened by the wool-lined leggings and also hidden by the filmy pink duster.
I smile with nervousness, feeling a little candle ignite in my chest. He likes me.
Well, he doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m Maggie. But he also thinks I’m pretty.
“Hey, there,” he greets me, coming to stand alongside me. He smells like the forest outside, like rain and pine and soil. “You survived your first day and you didn’t quit.”
“Well, you had the foresight to pay me first,” I joke. “But yeah, everything went fine.
” My eyes pan down to the sink, overflowing with dishes. “Last thing to do are the dishes,” I add brightly. “Can you grab me some dish soap? I don’t want to get my slimy hands all over the bottle. Just squirt a little in my hand—” My cheeks flower with blush. I’m so immature and scramble to pretend like I didn’t just make a that’s-what-she-said. “And I can get on gloves and finish.”
“Of course.” Lucas reaches over my head for the soap, incidentally crowding himself against my back as he does so. He grasps the soap, which I’m watching with great focus to pretend like I’m not focusing on his groin pillowed against my ass. But who are we kidding? His body heat radiates into me, and his woodsy scent swims all around me. He feels it, too, because something tell-tale twitches against my butt cheek as he steps away.
“Thanks,” I breathe. He squirts some soap into my hands and I lather and rinse.
“No problem.”
I don’t dare turn and glance at him, but he’s the one who breaks the silence. I flick the water off my hands and slip on the yellow rubber gloves draped over the faucet, and he says, “Wait.”
Chapter 6
Lucas
I knew it as soon as I stepped into the kitchen and saw her for the first time without being wet and a little muddy. I should have known that it would be so much worse if she was stunning on her worst day. And I would have been right.
She’s the pinnacle of retro femininity, a kind of woman I never even let myself dream about because they’re such a rare breed. Understated and irresistible.
Don’t fuck the nanny. Do not fuck the nanny. She has a boyfriend. And the kids. And it would completely destabilize Astrid. Even though it has been almost two years without sex now. No!
I’m about to walk away from her, doing dishes barefoot while wearing those cute, yellow rubber gloves when I hesitate. I can’t leave it like this. I wonder if she felt my erection on those cute, round little ass cheeks. I think about sinking my fingers into them. Making her call out my name, as if to rebuke me for making her feel so good.
“Wait,” I say.
Maggie completely freezes. Her gloves drip soap into the sink. She doesn’t look up. “Yes?”
The dark window above the sink throws her reflection back at me. I can see the intensity of her gaze, and the intensity of mine. But we both have to ignore that.
Or am I completely crazy?
“I appreciate how you came in, just because I needed the help. I know it was short notice and kind of inconsiderate of me to ask, even. But desperation will make you do crazy things.”
“I get that,” she whispers, and her eyelashes droop.
She slowly twists from the sink and leans her ass against the counter. Her gloved hands settle behind her on the counter ledge, and the position only slightly accentuates her breasts in that light, floral sweater. She would look perfect in a pearl necklace right now, and I have the dumb yet sharp urge to buy her one. Just so she can have that expensive but perfect finishing touch.
“What’s up?” she wonders, eyes on me again.
“We still need to talk about some things. I haven’t got your background check in, but I did contact your references, and they all agreed that you are a superb and trustworthy woman.”
The first reference had told me, “She had such a gentle touch when she babysat my little girl. She was a neighbor, the job dated three years ago. And Maggie such a sweetheart. It’s a shame that she took ill the way she did. I’m glad that she’s better now, though, and back to pursuing childcare. That’s great.”
I called the second reference, too, who said, “You married?” When I replied that I was not, his response was a chuckle and the word, “Good. She’ll get a man in trouble, that one. That hair, boy. The eyes. The freckles! Jesus! The body!” My mouth soured, and I replied with a terse goodbye. My heart felt riled at his words, as if he was walking all over something that belonged to me.
“So, let’s pretend that you’ve already signed the contract. I want to go over a few of the stipulations that sent some other nannies running.”
She plucks away the yellow rubber gloves and drapes them over the faucet again, then trains her gaze on me. She’s not only beautiful. There’s something knowing in her eyes, almost cunning. She’s fucking smart.
“Then let’s sit,” she says, and I pull out a chair at the kitchen table for her. She settles and smiles up at me, until my fingers brush her shoulder blades when I pull them from the back of the chair. Then her smile crumbles, and her eyes muddy with darkness, still looking right at me. My cock rolls over softly, like it’s trying to wake up, and I take a step away from her and settle in my own seat.
I take a deep breath and organize my thoughts before I begin.
“I expect you to treat this house as if it’s your home, because it will be, but I also expect that it will be treated as if you were the true mother of my children.”
Her teeth sink into her juicy lower lip, and she examines me. “What do you mean?”
“The true mother of my children wouldn’t let strangers to my children into the house, because that would disorient them and give them the sense that the home isn’t totally secure. They knew to anticipate a nanny. This is fine. But I can’t have them waking up for a glass of water and finding some random guy sitting on the living room couch, watching television with you. Do you understand?”
“Oh.” Maggie shakes her head softly. “My life isn’t like that, sir. You don’t need to worry.”
“The schedule is a demanding one. You understand that as well, right? There are no days off. There isn’t much time to conduct a social life outside of these walls. It is almost unfair, what I ask of my nanny. But it’s what I need. Full-time commitment, even at night. Because that is what children are. They go around the clock.”
“Yes, sir.” Maggie nods firmly. “I completely agree, and there won’t be any problem.”
I frown, wondering why a young, beautiful woman—twenty-two, she said—would have no qualms with sacrificing her social life at the level of a stay-at-home mother of two. I haven’t even seen her take out a cell phone, now that I think about it.
“You don’t have any friends here?” I ask. “No one?”
Her eyelashes bat. I may have struck a nerve. Shit. “I moved from my hometown after…” She swallows. “Some things happened in my personal life. So I have no life right now. I might get one in the future, but at the moment, I’m just… being Maggie.” She sighs, the comment oddly weighted in her voice.
“Don’t your parents want to know how you are?”
“They passed away three years ago,” she says, the statement mild and quick, as if she’s saying, “And no ketchup on that.”
I tell her that I’m sorry and she nods, taking a deep breath. I want to ask about what her reference said—that she had been sick—but now isn’t the time. I already forced her to mention her recently deceased parents, who must have been in some tragic, freak accident to have died at the same time, with her still so young. “I don’t have a support network at all,” Maggie confides in me. “I need this job, and I am qualified for it, sir. I won’t let you down.”
I nod. That has to be enough for me for now. To be honest, her first day did go well.
There’s one more thing I want to say, even though it’s not in the contract. Even though I never made this request of any other nanny.
“I know you’ll be living here, Maggie, and because of that, you might be in various states of undress from time to time, and I accept that.”
Her cheeks go pink and her eyes dart away. Her throat pulses as she swallows. God, I want her. I want to fold her up in my arms and penetrate her fragile, perfect pussy. Shit. Fuck. Forget about all that. Say the thing. Set some boundaries before you ruin your life and your work relationship with this woman.
“But I would appreciate a certain level of discretion around me,” I say, because it’s the goddamn truth, and it’s what I need to say. “Just, please. Keep it modest. Do you understand my need?”
Maggie pulls in a breath, and it moves all through her. She pulls her back straighter, and her shoulders square. Her breasts thrust slightly outward.
“I think I do,” she says, examining me even more thoughtfully now. “And I can promise to keep it classy.”
I nod, thankful that she said yes to both conditions, because they would be deal-breakers for her. But Maggie seems great. I definitely want to keep her.
“Great. Thanks. We’ll sign the day after tomorrow, when the search comes back.”
“Sure thing.”
I turn, and a giggle rises at my back.
Glancing over my shoulder at Maggie, I find her eyes bright and jovial, her full lips curved up into a smile.
“What?”
“Nothing. It just… It sounds like you’re some kind of werewolf, and you’re telling me to be careful after dark.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got the chains if I feel beast mode coming on,” I joke, even though I might need them after all. She does make me feel like extra muscles are popping out of me, like I can’t control what my mouth might do.
Chapter 7
Sofia
I told Lucas I won’t wander the property in anything too sexy. I said that, and I meant it, and I won’t.
But I bought this sheer, peach silk negligee. It’s so beautiful, and it was only twenty dollars, and I was looking forward to wearing it tonight. Even if I can’t leave my room in it. Even if I have to throw on the pink duster to go downstairs without being mauled by my boss.
The thought sends a shiver through me, and my eyes flash at my reflection in the vanity mirror. I do look good in this thing. The shape of my bare ass is barely discernible, but it is discernible. The color matches my skin almost exactly, making it look as if I’m naked.
I lay in bed and twist my body back and forth against the sheets. The silk pressed against my skin excites a million nerve endings. And I think of Lucas, even though I shouldn’t. He’s my boss and I need this job and I can’t complicate things any worse than they already are.
But didn’t he imply that he needed to be chained up to stay away from me at night? Wasn’t that the joke he made?
