by Mia Madison
In any case, the meal tonight is uneventful. We all retire to bed early, tired from the day. Bridget has an early flight tomorrow, while I will officially start work as soon as Sophie wakes up.
In the middle of the night, I need a drink and creep from my room, wishing I’d taken a glass of water to bed with me. I’m grateful that the lights are on low, and I won’t wake anyone by having to put one on. The glasses are easy to find, too, but when I take a couple of gulps of water and turn from the dispenser in the fridge, triumphant at not making a sound, I squeal and almost drop the glass.
Elliott comes in from the terrace, wearing nothing but a pair of track pants slung low around his hips. Damn! Did I really lick my lips? I will my mouth to keep still, and then I gabble, “You gave me a fright. I just needed a glass of water.” I hope he doesn’t think I was stalking him.
“And I just needed some air,” he says. “Air and water—two essentials in life.”
He hesitates a second and then comes over to me, and I gasp because of the way he’s looking at me. That’s no babysitter-employer look, unless I really am delusional.
Before I know what’s happening, he takes the glass from my hand and puts it down, and my mouth goes dry despite the water I just drank. His hand is on my cheek, and he bends his head, his lips brushing mine. When I don’t protest, he kisses me again, pulling me against his bare chest. My nipples harden through my thin camisole. Can he feel that? I don’t care.
Protest? Why would I? I don’t think he expects me to, either. He must have seen me looking at him on the flight, on the beach, maybe over dinner—the same way he looked at me when he came in from outside, like a hungry animal ready to pounce, not quite sure the moment is right.
But everything was leading to this. The kiss was inevitable, and I respond with my mouth, my body arching into his. He kisses the side of my neck, my throat, my shoulders, and I moan against him, overcome with the male scent and hardness of him, the velvet touches of his lips against my bare skin. Then he’s back taking possession of my mouth, hard and wild, a kiss that reaches my core and makes me lose all sense of where I am.
Whatever happens now, I don’t care. I’ll take the consequences, whatever they are. There’s no way back from a kiss like this.
But then as quickly as it began, it ends, and he says, “Sorry.”
Sorry? I’ve just been kissed to within an inch of my life, and he says sorry? As mortified as I am, I gather my wits as quickly as I can and mumble, “Just forget it happened,” knowing I’ll never forget it.
“Must have been the moonlight that got to me.” He shrugs his shoulders. “The sun will be out again tomorrow.”
I’m not so sure about that.
CHAPTER 14
Elliott
When Jenna turns and goes quickly off to her room, forgetting her water, I feel terrible.
How fucking stupid was that? Kissing her in my kitchen at one o’clock in the morning when I couldn’t sleep. Way to go. Just when I’d promised myself to keep things professional, to be on my best behavior, not to give even a hint to the new nanny that I find her so attractive I want to bend her over the kitchen counter and take her right there like a Neanderthal, or that I’ve wanted to do that from the moment I showed her around my Palma beach house.
But seeing her there in her little camisole and shorts made me forget every kind of promise I made to myself. That, and the way she looked at me.
The whole situation and that look should have raised Ruth-style alarm bells, but it didn’t and now I’ve really messed up, putting the proverbial cat among the pigeons.
Fuck! I hope we can get back to being professional in the morning despite my stupidity. I can’t keep replacing nannies. It’s not fair to Sophie. And my sister can’t drop everything to help out all the time.
*
After a restless night where that kiss figures more than once in my dreams, along with a certain woman in camisole and shorts, I hear Jenna and Bridget getting breakfast. The sound of Bridget instructing Jenna on what Sophie likes and telling her about the usual routine drifts into my room. Jenna is quieter. I can hardly hear her responses.
I’m such a coward, staying out of sight as long as possible, taking a shower, getting fully dressed before I go out there to face whatever I have to face.
But the girls are getting on fine without me. I should have expected that. Jenna is very different to Ruth and Angelica. There’s no drama or shouting. It doesn’t even seem as if Jenna is in a bad mood with me. That kiss hasn’t changed her demeanor at all.
And somehow, I don’t like that. I don’t like that my kiss didn’t affect her in the slightest. Because, fuck, it affected me.
CHAPTER 15
Jenna
I’m pleased that Bridget is around this morning, and that I have Sophie to keep me occupied. I can’t let her out of my sight for one moment, because she is into everything.
I am so busy taking in what Bridget is telling me about Sophie’s routine that I can’t worry about Elliott. Even when he appears looking sheepish, I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing the effect he has on me.
There is no way he’s going to accuse me of doing a Ruth on him. That was all him last night. I might have responded, enthusiastically to my shame, but I was not the one who started it. That was him.
“Would you like some coffee?” I ask him, proud of myself, in the circumstances, for behaving like an adult rather than a schoolgirl with a crush.
He accepts the coffee and pours in cream and sugar. How does he manage to have abs like he does with that kind of diet? Life is so unfair. But I can’t think about his body this morning.
After swallowing his coffee in a few gulps, he scoops Sophie up from her high chair where she has just finished breakfast and swirls her around. The kid is going to vomit on him, and it serves him right, but of course she doesn’t do that. She plays the adoring female and giggles at him. The traitor. But I can’t help but smile at the daddy-daughter display.
“Right, that’s me.” Bridget brings her suitcase out into the kitchen. “I’ll catch you at Christmas, right?” She says to Elliott. “Of course, you’re welcome too, Jenna, unless you have other plans.”
“Thanks. I’m not sure yet.” I might be long gone by then if we can’t work this thing out, if it becomes too awkward. I’ll most likely spend Christmas with Katie and her parents. They have been like a family to me since I lost my parents in an accident with a truck when I was seventeen.
It takes Bridget a while to get away after all the hugging and kissing with her niece and advice to her brother, which he seems to take quite well, and then Ben takes her off in the car to the airport. We wave her away, and then I’m alone with Sophie and Elliott and with what feels to me like the huge elephant of our kiss in the room.
It’s so uncomfortable, I’m going to have to say something to clear the air, but before I can open my mouth he says, “Do you have everything you need for Sophie? I’m going out for a while.” And he’s out of the door as soon as I say, “Yes, we’ll be fine.”
Sophie waves her daddy off. I’m not sure if it’s a disappointment or a relief when he goes.
“Okay, kid.” Sophie looks at me with her big blue eyes and I try not to think how much like her father’s they are. “Playtime while I clear up your breakfast mess, and then a walk for us. Maybe a couple of hours on the beach after lunch.”
CHAPTER 16
Elliott
“Did Bridget get away all right?” I ask Ben when I return to the house, unable to stay away for long. Though I intended to take myself off into Palma and hang around all day until dark, I’m back within a few hours by cab, not even waiting for Ben to pick me up.
“Yes, no problem. Her flight was a bit delayed, but she should be landing about now.”
“I thought it was strange she hadn’t texted yet. Do you know where Sophie is?” It’s clear she and Jenna are out, given the silence in the house.
“Jenna said they had more sandcast
les to build. They’ll be down on the beach.” He pauses. “Jenna seems nice.”
“Yes, she does.” I bristle. I don’t want Ben getting any ideas. He’s closer to Jenna’s age. They probably have a lot more in common than she and I can ever hope to have. What am I saying? Why do I even care if she gets on with Ben? Or with all the Bens in the world who might want to get on with her?
I grab myself a drink and check my email. There are a couple of scripts from my agent to review. I already have a project lined up in Paris and another movie role in London at the end of January. Does it matter what comes after that? Of course it matters, but not right now. Right now, all my attention is on the beach. I can’t even pretend my interest lies elsewhere. Before I have time to think, I’m in swim shorts and grabbing a towel.
“You look like you’re having fun. Can I join you?” I ask Jenna when I find her and Sophie on the beach.
Jenna looks up, startled, and a faint blush colors her cheeks. “Of course. You’re welcome to add more sand to our heap. I’m not sure I can call this a castle.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It has a certain charm.”
Sophie hands me her bucket. “Daddy!” I fill it up and pour sand onto the top. It slides down the side. And then I add another. “About last night…” I begin.
“Don’t mention it.” Jenna looks away, and rustles around in her bag for something, and then gives up trying to find whatever it was.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but I have to. It was all my fault, and I owe you an apology. What can I say, other that I’m sorry? You don’t need to worry that it will happen again.”
“I’m not worrying.” She looks back at me.
“You’re not?”
“Do I have anything to worry about?”
“No.” I don’t sound at all sure to my ears. Do I seem sincere to her?
“Good.” She turns and starts patting down the sand I added over the sandcastle. Fuck, why did I say that will never happen again? I want her hands on me, patting me down. This is not going well at all.
“It’s just you seemed like you didn’t mind,” I say, ungallantly. I don’t want her “good” to be the last word on the subject.
“I didn’t mind. I was surprised, shocked, even. But I didn’t mind.” She scoops up Sophie, who has toddled a few steps away. I watch Jenna in her red bikini. I want to rip that thing off her. Just as well we’re on a public beach, and we have Sophie to think about.
“I don’t want to turn into your previous nanny. Did you kiss her in the middle of the night in the kitchen? Is that why she got the wrong idea?”
“I swear I never looked at her that way. And I never kissed her.”
“Occupational hazard, then.”
“What is?”
“Being irresistible to women,” she says, and laughs. “Put on your armor in case I get out of hand and run amok.”
CHAPTER 17
Jenna
I didn’t expect Elliott to talk about last night after he skipped out without mentioning it this morning. But once I get over the initial awkwardness of him bringing the subject up, it’s better on the beach. I’m more in my element there with Sophie, out among the tourists and sun worshippers, than alone in his kitchen in the dead of night, and I can tease him and laugh.
“You’re nothing like Ruth, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You’re saying that now. But maybe there’s this spell you put on women, and we just can’t help it. Resistance is futile.”
“You don’t really think that!”
“No. You’re pug ugly. Can’t bear to look at you.”
His turn to laugh. He has been looking so serious. “Have dinner with me,” he says. “I just mean at home. Once Sophie is in bed, eat with me. I’d like that.”
What does he mean? Just eat dinner or a date type dinner? It’s hard to tell. I guess I’ll find out.
I’m not sure what I’ll do once he decides I’m like Ruth after all. I’ll have to leave and find yet another job. That’s not going to look good on my resume. Who’s going to employ me then to look after their kids?
Yet I can’t turn him down. It seems rude, so I just say, “Okay then, let’s see if Sophie goes to bed before it’s time for dinner.” I’ll make some excuse if I have to.
I try to ignore him on the beach when he goes off to swim, but my eyes follow him, the same as they did the first time. When he comes back, water dripping off his body, I feel my nipples harden, even as I try not to look. This is not good.
“Your turn to swim if you like,” he says, “while I play with Sophie.”
The sun is baking despite it being October. And after watching him, I need to cool off, so I nod and wade into the sea. After the first shock of cold water on my hot skin, it’s not so bad, especially once I plunge in and my shoulders are under the surface.
And then I notice him with Sophie in his arms. They are on the edge of the water, and he’s dangling her legs in the sea, splashing about. She loves it. And my heart melts all over again.
Which is why later, when Sophie goes to bed early and is out like a light, tired from her time on the beach, and I come out to find the big marble-topped table set for two on the terrace, with wine and candles, I don’t have the willpower to say, “No, I’ll just make a sandwich and take it to my room.”
“I’m not really dressed for a dinner like that,” I say hopelessly.
“Come as you are; wear a ballgown. Whatever you like. But dinner will wait if you want to get changed.”
And so I do. I wear the dress that makes me feel good. The blue one that Katie said was a knockout. “Matches your eyes and makes your boobs look bigger.” And there’s no going back from that.
CHAPTER 18
Elliott
I wish I had never told Jenna about Ruth. I feel like we’re playing a cat and mouse game now. At first, I was wary that anything might develop, but now, in less than twenty-four hours, I want something to happen. Yet I can tell Jenna is concerned that she will come across like my former nanny. That’s all my fault. As usual. I am such a klutz when it comes to women.
My sister tells me that all the time. “You’re supposed to have it made,” she says. “You’re a movie star, for goodness’ sake, you could have virtually any woman you want. Why do you end up with such freaks?”
But I’m pretty sure Jenna is not a freak, and that she would get the sisterly stamp of approval. My sister never invited any of my other dates for Christmas, for a start. The thought of Angelica with Bridget and Mike in their happy family home makes me shudder.
And then Jenna appears in her dress, and I can’t think anything at all. My brain goes to my cock. I’ve seen those curves in her bikini, but somehow, they are sexier than ever in that dress. It’s not that it’s over the top for a dinner at home. It’s very simple, but somehow it accentuates her shape and brings out the hint of copper in her hair. Her eyes sparkle as if she loves wearing the dress. I can tell she feels good in it.
“Beautiful dress,” I say, because it really is.
We go out onto the terrace, the waves lapping on the now-empty beach. There are stars in the sky. Perfect. And as usual, my housekeeper has done a great job with the food. I asked her to make a selection of tapas. Jenna tucks into the tempting treats and tries everything, and it’s so refreshing to be with a girl who will eat more than a lettuce leaf.
We talk about everything: our families, politics, the movies she’s actually seen and liked, the places she’s been and the ones she’d like to go to when she gets over her phobia.
“Do you like being famous?” she asks me.
“Semi-famous. You didn’t recognize me, remember.” I smile at her. “I can’t lie. It has its perks, as well as the hassle that sometimes comes with it. The good part about it is when I speak to someone who has the cash to make a movie. It’s a lot harder if no one has heard of you. Being recognized in public is less fun. And swimming around in the Hollywood goldfish bowl sucks. I don’t want to be
more well-known than I am.”
“I’d recognize you if I saw you again. I’m pretty sure of it.” She teases, her eyes glittering. “Even with the strange beard. Even if I’m terrified on a flight.”
“I’m glad about that. But would you speak to me?”
“That depends on whether we fall out, whether you send me away in disgrace.”
“Why would I do that?”
“It’s a habit you seem to have.”
“I gave that habit up a few weeks ago.” I get up from the table and take her hand, and she gets up, too. And then I kiss her on the terrace under the stars.
She feels more hesitant than before as if she fears a repeat of our first kiss, and she doesn’t respond right away.
“I’m sorry about last time,” I say. “I really am.”
“You’re not going to run off and say it was a mistake?”
“No chance of that.”
She smiles as I lift her chin and swoop down to touch her lips with mine. She has that delicious scent I’m starting to associate with her—light, fragrant, totally seductive. I pull her against me, the blissful softness of her body against my chest, and she wraps her arms around me as our kiss deepens in the moonlight.
I want to kiss the hell out of her, to kiss her until our lips are bruised and can’t kiss anymore, but I don’t want to scare her with my intensity. Too much, too soon. Yet I can’t help lifting her up onto the edge of the table, as if I want to take her right there on the terrace.
Her eyes widen as I get between her soft thighs, where I want to be, the beautiful blue dress riding up, exposing her bare legs. And I kiss her again, harder. Neither of us hesitates this time.
She’s panting when we pull apart, her lips red from the kiss.
