Men in Charge: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

by Natasha L. Black

  Still, I couldn’t help feeling a tingle in my chest thinking about Blake. He had been my brother’s best friend forever and when I was a kid, I’d always had a serious crush on him. There was definitely an upside to going to work every day and being around a man like him. He was successful, handsome, powerful, and even though it was a moot point, seeing as I would be his employee – and his best friend’s little sister – it still made me want to jump right on the opportunity.

  “Well,” I said. “If it will help them and I can get my work done too, I’ll do it.”

  “Yes!” Hollis jumped up and hugged me tightly. “I knew you would agree,” Hollis whispered, still hugging me tightly. “You have a heart of gold, and your ambition is amazing.”

  “You should have started out with that.” I laughed.

  “I couldn’t unleash all the good stuff right off the bat,” he said. “I have to store it up and really put it out there when it counts. Otherwise, it wouldn’t mean so much.”

  “Right. Heaven forbid you tell me how amazing I am all the time.”

  “Okay,” he said. With a dramatic flourish, he pulled out an envelope. “Here’s your plane ticket. I already bought it since I know you so well.”

  “You are too much,” I said, shaking my head.

  “And there’s some cash in there in case you want some food or something,” he replied with a smile.

  “Thank you.” I chuckled. “Or six shots of whiskey.”

  “I don’t know if showing up drunk is a good first impression or not, but hey, everybody has their tactics.”

  “Well, thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.” I smiled.

  “Thank you for taking care of my best friend,” Hollis replied. “Alright, I’m out of here. If you need a ride to the airport, let me know.”

  “Will do,” I called out as he dashed from the house.

  When the front door closed, I put the towel that I was folding down and laughed. That was definitely a surprise I wasn’t expecting. Since the decision was made, I might as well get to packing. I was leaving on Friday, and I would need to be prepared for a move across the country. I finished up the laundry and went in the kitchen, grabbing my cell phone and calling my two jobs. They weren’t very happy about me quitting with such short notice, but it was a good opportunity, and one that I couldn’t pass up. After that, I headed to my room and started to pack.

  I pulled out the things in my closet and started going through my clothes. What would it be like to share a house with a kid? I was the youngest; way younger than my siblings. By the time I was in middle school, I was the only child left in the house, and I had no experience living with a little kid. I had no idea what to expect. Hopefully, Cooper would take to me quickly. It was probably going to be strange for him with his mom having died only a year before, but I wanted him to feel comfortable with me and me with him too.

  I was majoring in early childhood development, so the job could technically be classified as practical field work for my degree program with the extra perk of getting paid to do it. It would help me understand what kind of mindset a kid his age would have, especially going through a trying time in his life. I didn’t want to treat him like a test subject by any means, but I couldn’t resist wanting to learn from the experience.

  I grabbed my phone and pulled up my weather app. The heat in San Francisco was winding down for fall, and if it was chilly here, I could only imagine it would be extra chilly in Boston too. I wasn’t sure how long to pack for, but I didn’t want to leave anything behind that I might need. It would be the first time I’d be leaving home, and not just for a vacation. I would be making Boston my home, and I’d always wanted to go there. I loved San Francisco, there was no doubt about that, but I wanted to see new places, meet new people, and I had always heard Boston had some interesting personalities.

  I needed to stay the course, work hard, and get my degree finished without any major distractions. I could only hope that Blake wasn’t as hot as I remembered.

  3

  Blake

  It felt like everyone in Boston had decided to go to Logan Airport that day. There were droves of people coming down the escalator toward the baggage claim, none of them fitting the description of Aly that I had in my mind. Cooper and I had talked about the change, about having a nanny come and live at the house, and he didn’t seem very excited about it at all. I had to explain it to him in the same way I was explaining it to myself. Change was always hard, and we’d been through our fair share of the negative side of it. However, if we wanted to continue to grow, to move forward with life, we needed some positive change to happen. The nanny could possibly be that positive change we needed, someone to get us out of our rut. Cooper had just shrugged his shoulders, not really saying anything.

  I wanted him to look forward to someone new in his life. It would help me find solace in moving forward, but I figured I’d have to make do and set a good example. Even in his grumpiness over the whole thing, though, he’d begrudgingly helped me clean out the guest room and make it up for Aly. Instead of using his mom’s old stuff, though, we went out and bought some new linens, towels, and such so we would all feel more comfortable about a woman being back in the house. It was going to be quite a change.

  I looked down at the sign I had printed at the office and then back up at the crowd. I was pretty sure she would know me by sight, but I wasn’t sure I would completely recognize her. Sure, I had an image of what she looked like in my head, but it was of a fifteen-year-old girl with long gangly limbs, wild blonde hair, and dirt on her knees from playing too hard with the other kids. I had been thirty years old the last time I’d seen her. My wife and I had just gotten married, and she was pregnant with our son but not enough for even us to know yet.

  I had grown up in San Francisco but went to Boston to start my company. That was where I had met my wife and where we had started our family. Things had gone well for us there and so I hadn’t gone back to San Francisco very much. I was busy with work and family, and when Hollis wanted to see me, he flew out to Boston to get away from the smog for a little while. I’d gone back to San Francisco a few times, but we never went to Hollis’s house. We always met out at one of our old stomping grounds, and the family and I would either stay at my parents’ house or at a hotel.

  Having that vision of a fifteen-year-old girl in my mind led me straight to a surprise when this gorgeous, curvy, blonde-haired babe stopped in front of me and smiled. Her lips were full, her huge blue eyes full of excitement and surprise. I stared at her for several moments, unsure whether she was even looking at me. She wore a black V-neck T-shirt, tight jeans, and tennis shoes. Every curve of her body flowed perfectly like she was created out of clay, molded meticulously. Her skin was fair and so smooth like a porcelain doll . Immediately, my heart beat faster in my chest, my throat went tight, and the heat in my body shot to my face. I stared into the girl’s eyes before recognition dawned and I remembered that look. It was Aly, only she was definitely not fifteen years old anymore and definitely not that gangly teen I had last seen.

  Aly was a full-grown woman, and one I could barely keep my cool in front of. She raised her eyebrows at me and chuckled, reminding me to close my mouth that I hadn’t even realized had fallen open while I was staring at her in shock. It wasn’t like me be rendered speechless, but it was the first time a woman had pulled this kind of response from me since I’d met my wife.

  “I, uh, Aly?” I sputtered.

  “It’s me.” She laughed, her cheeks rosy.

  “I don’t know why, but I was expecting a fifteen-year-old,” I admitted. “I guess it’s been a long time.”

  “That it has.”

  My mind was running at about a thousand miles a minute trying to process what was happening. This gorgeous woman, whose smile lit up the dark corners of my heart, was going to be living in my house. She was going to be there every morning when I woke up and every night when I went to bed. I never once, when Hollis said he was sending
her, thought about having any kind of attraction to her. I never thought about having a beautiful woman only feet away from me when she was sleeping or showering or anything else that was erotically running through my man brain at the moment. I hadn’t thought about it at all, and if I had, it was brief, and she didn’t have a face, or body for that matter, in my thoughts. I took a deep breath and shook my head, trying to gather my wits.

  “Here, let me take those,” I said, picking up her suitcases. “I parked in the garage.”

  I turned away from her, rolling my eyes at being incapable of getting my shit together and stuttering like a twelve-year-old boy hitting puberty. I walked toward the parking garage where the SUV was parked and could feel her walking quickly behind me, trying to keep up. I opened the back of the SUV and put her suitcases in, taking her other bags from her and piling them on top.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  We climbed into the car, and I turned it on, hitting the button on the CD player before it could start blaring out Dave Matthews, which I’d been listening to all morning for some reason. I pulled through the parking garage and stopped at the front booth to pay for parking. Then, I pulled out into the busy roadway and headed toward the house on the outskirts of the city.

  “How was your flight?” I asked, unsure of what to talk about.

  “It was long but good,” she said. “They had a couple of in-flight movies, so I wasn’t too bored.”

  “I hate flying. I usually get drunk and pass out.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought maybe you’d frown on me showing up wasted.” She laughed.

  “You might be right.” I couldn’t help but laugh. The feel of it was so foreign. “So, have you been to Boston before?”

  She looked over at me. “No. I’ve always wanted to come here, though. The only time I’ve been on this coast was for a trip to Washington, DC, in my senior year of high school.”

  “I like DC,” I said. “Nice place, but Boston is definitely different.”

  “I’ve heard.” Her smile made butterflies take flight in my stomach.

  Aly started talking about Washington, DC, what she did there and what she didn’t like about the place. I tried hard to pay attention to what she was saying, but I was only taking in about fifty percent of it. Instead, my head was swimming with the thought that this beautiful, sexy, intelligent woman was the same gangly kid I had seen years before. I was starting to think it might have been a serious mistake on Hollis’s part to send her out to me. She was not the kind of girl you could ignore. Not only did it feel like I was being drawn into that perfect body, but her personality was killer too. She was bubbly but sarcastic, a combination I found extremely attractive.

  I swallowed hard and gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to push the thoughts from my head, but every time she moved, I got a whiff of her lavender and vanilla scent and the thoughts started all over again. That reaction surprised me, and while I knew it was inappropriate, I kind of liked that those emotions were making me feel alive to the world again. It was a double-edged sword for me, a dangerous place to go. On one hand, I felt guilty for having any kind of feelings like that. I’d been married for so long, it was built into my head that I wasn’t supposed to lust over any other woman. On the other hand, my wife was gone, and I was still here; struggling to find some foothold on happiness again.

  I’d thought my desire for another woman had died with my wife, but it was waking inside of me out of nowhere. It was confusing but satisfying at the same time and reminded me I was still alive, I hadn’t died with my wife, just that part of my life had. Still, this was the woman who was coming to help take care of my son, the woman who would be there to mentor, support, and help raise of the most important human being in my life. With her living under my roof, those feelings were going to be a problem.

  Hopefully my infatuation was temporary; excitement for someone new in my life, lust for an incredibly attractive woman. We didn’t know each other at all, and I had a lot more things I needed on my mind than getting my nanny in bed.

  4

  Aly

  “I liked the Washington Monument, and the art museums were the best,” I said. “What I liked most, though, was the dang food. They had the best pizza I’ve ever had. Of course, I’ve never been to Chicago where they say pizza is the main dish.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from spewing words out of my mouth. They kept coming and coming, and I wasn’t even sure he was paying attention to me at all. He was staring out the window, clutching the steering wheel so tightly, his knuckles were white. Meanwhile, I was in the passenger seat blabbering on like an idiot. I was nervous, and when I got nervous, I became a Chatty Kathy. My mother always told me it was one of those features I needed to work on. How could I not be nervous, though? Blake was even more gorgeous than I remembered.

  When he was young, I’d thought he was hotter than hell with that perfectly charming smile, those big, firm muscles, and the way his hair was always styled just right. I remembered watching him walk along with his hand pressed on the perfect spot on his wife’s lower back, showing affection but also partnership. Even at fifteen years old, that made my heart pitter-patter in my chest. But now, years later, I had to say he was even more gorgeous than when he was younger.

  I glanced to the side, watching him as he drove along, my eyes wandering over the bulging muscle of his arm under his perfectly pressed dress shirt. I followed it up to his firm chin and up the side of his head. He had a bit of grey peppered on his temple and very fine lines around the edges of his eyes. They didn’t make him looked old at all. What they did was make him look absolutely freaking delicious. I snapped my head back straight ahead and bit my bottom lip. What the hell was I doing? I hadn’t even been there an hour, and I was already ogling my boss like he was some sort of meat on a stick. That was a no, a definite full stop. I was there for a purpose, and it was not to seduce my brother’s best friend. It was to make his life easier and my life more productive. Still, the heat of his body emanated through the car, and I felt like I was having hot flashes just being close to him.

  I couldn’t remember the last time a man had that kind of effect on me, and in fact, I was pretty sure no man had ever done that. I’d dated a bit in high school and after, but I had so many aspirations that I tried to stay focused on my goals of working and getting through my college courses. Until now, right there in his car, my lust had pretty much stayed in my imagination and hadn’t stepped out into the sun in a long time. I lived with my parents. What was I going to do? Start something with a guy and sneak him in through my bedroom window? My parents still noticed when I came in late, and I was pretty sure they would have noticed if I didn’t come home at all.

  My feelings had to stay hidden away. I couldn’t let my childhood crush turn into anything more than that, not that I thought he was interested whatsoever. Still, I was a woman, a not too shabby looking one, staying at this rich widower’s house in Boston. It sounded like the makings of a romance novel, but I couldn’t let it turn into one. After packing all my things back at home and thinking about the future, I’d realized how important this job was to me. It was going to afford me the ability to make money, get out of my parents’ place, and get through college like I’d been trying to do for a couple years. On top of that, he was my older brother’s best friend, not someone I could hide having a relationship with. The last thing I wanted was to end up dragging my ass, tail tucked between my legs, back to California. I would be completely disgraced.

  If something like that happened, I didn’t even know how I would possibly explain it to my mother. She would have an aneurysm and then proceed to lecture me for the rest of my life on making smart choices. I loved my mother and leaned on her a lot. The last thing I wanted was for her to be disappointed in me.

  I looked out my window as the SUV started to slow down a bit. We’d turned into a small neighborhood right outside of the city. The houses were huge, landscaped perfectly, and had that East Coast appeal to them
like I imagined in my head. We took a couple of turns and pulled up to a gate. Blake typed in a code, and the big metal gates clanked as they slowly opened up, revealing a three-story house that was bigger than my high school. It was a beautiful house and bigger than anything I’d ever been inside before. He pulled into the garage and turn off the ignition before looking over at me and smiling.

  “Here we are,” he said. “Your home for however long you decide to stay with us.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, taking his lead and getting out of the car.

  We went around back, grabbed my bags, and headed inside. Everything was immaculate, with granite countertops in the kitchen, hardwood floors, and stainless-steel appliances everywhere. We walked quickly through the house to the main stairwell and up to the right.

  “I wanted to let you get settled in first,” he said. “Before I show you the rest of the house.”

  He opened the door to the bedroom, and my mouth dropped open. The thing was two, maybe three times bigger than the room I had at home. Everything was beautiful, the mahogany furniture, the four-poster bed, and the light-yellow down comforter on the mattress. It made me want to lay down right there and take a nap.

  “Here are the keys to the SUV,” he said. “That way if you have to pick up Cooper or go somewhere, you have your own transportation. Usually, I either have a driver for work or take the Mercedes.”

  “Those are words I will probably never say,” I laughed.

  He chuckled. “I never thought about it that way. “Anyway, this is your room. Feel free to do whatever you’d like with it. It’s your space. It has an attached bath, so you won’t have to share with us. If you come back out of the bedroom and turn right, Cooper’s room is two doors down and then my room is across from his. Feel free to explore everything whenever you’d like.”