Dragon's Nanny: A Paranormal Romance (West Coast Water Dragons Book 1)

by Kayla Wolf

  Dragon’s Nanny

  A Paranormal Romance

  West Coast Water Dragons Book 1

  Kayla Wolf

  Copyright © 2019 by The Wolf Sisters Books.

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of the book only. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form, including recording, without prior written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Lachlan

  Chapter 2 – Serena

  Chapter 3 – Lachlan

  Chapter 4 – Serena

  Chapter 5 – Lachlan

  Chapter 6 – Serena

  Chapter 7 – Lachlan

  Chapter 8 – Serena

  Chapter 9 – Lachlan

  Chapter 10 – Serena

  Chapter 11 – Lachlan

  Chapter 12 – Serena

  Chapter 13 – Lachlan

  Chapter 14 – Serena

  Chapter 15 – Lachlan

  Chapter 16 – Serena

  Chapter 17 – Lachlan

  Chapter 18 – Serena

  Chapter 19 – Lachlan

  About the Author

  Books by The Wolf Sisters

  Chapter 1 – Lachlan

  “Delilah, watch out!”

  Lachlan’s whole world froze as the scene unfolded before him. The toddler, her inquisitive little hands reaching up to grasp at the binding on a pile of wooden planks that were leaned against the wall of the half-built cottage he was working on. The planks, ever so slowly beginning to topple, threatening to crush the three-year-old girl underneath them. And Lachlan, ten feet away, already running towards his daughter and knowing with sick certainty that he was too far away to intervene before—

  “Gotcha!”

  Out of nowhere, Bryce appeared, scooping Delilah into his arms as the wood clattered harmlessly to the ground where she’d been only seconds before. The toddler giggled as the big guy tossed her into the air, completely oblivious to the fate she’d so narrowly avoided. Lachlan reached them, his heart pounding with adrenalin and relief. Bryce raised an eyebrow at him as he handed his daughter over, and Lachlan sighed. Bryce wouldn’t say much—the big guy never did waste words—but Lachlan could feel the judgment, clear as a bell.

  And he was right to judge. A construction site was no place for a toddler. Lachlan hoisted Delilah onto his hip, feeling her settling happily against his side as though nothing had happened. As far as she was concerned, it hadn’t. She’d never expressed a single bit of fear or anxiety of things that even grown adults found frightening. It was one of her most charming qualities… but it also made her quite a handful to look after.

  ”Guess we better find you a babysitter,” Lachlan told Delilah. She made a face at him, already clearly keen to be back on the ground and free to explore. They’d only been at the site for fifteen minutes, and Lachlan knew how far behind they were, but there was nothing for it but to head off.

  ”Bryce, I’m gonna head back to camp and see if Alice can mind her for the day.”

  ”Do what you gotta do, buddy.” Bryce was restoring the pile of planks to its rightful place. “No rush.”

  Lachlan sighed as he carried a protesting Delilah away from the work site and towards the path that led back to the little village that they all called home. Bryce was being kind. They both knew full well that there was absolutely a rush. It was midsummer, and unseasonably hot—at this rate, the cottages wouldn’t be built in time to take full advantage of next year’s tourist season. And they’d need to get guests in the cottages as soon as possible if they were going to pay back the considerable debt they’d gotten into in the interests of getting this venture off the ground.

  It was something they should have done years ago, actually. Lachlan had been gritting his teeth about it for a long time, but before this season, he hadn’t been in any position to complain. That had all changed a few months ago, though. The leader of their little community had left, heading back to Colorado to spend more time with her family. She’d been such a pillar of their community for so long that they’d felt a little lost without her. It had been only natural for Lachlan to step up—after all, he’d been helping Francesca lead since he’d arrived in the village, and the smooth running of their little settlement had fallen to him. It had taken some convincing to get the others on board, but he’d leaned in—Lachlan had always had a way of guiding groups of people to follow his lead. Natural charisma, maybe. He knew he was a good-looking guy—his sandy blonde hair and pale blue eyes had made him quite a success among the women he’d met. He always looked as though he’d just come in from the beach, he’d been told once or twice. Well, in a way, he had.

  Sometimes he missed his wild old days, he thought a little wistfully as they walked down the path back towards the little village’s main square. Life on the road had been a lot of fun and excitement… but it didn’t hold a candle to living in this beautiful place. The peninsula was absolutely pristine—gorgeous beaches, beautiful forests, all kinds of interesting and possibly unique wildlife that made its home there. Emerson, one of Lachlan’s close friends, was absolutely fascinated by the range of birds that made their home on the peninsula. Lachlan wasn’t so interested in birds—but he was interested in the potential that this place had to be a tourist hotspot. People were more and more interested in nature and wildlife these days, especially as interest in conservation and environmentalism rose, and Lachlan knew that their environmentally friendly, sustainable little community had the potential to be very popular among tourists. That meant income for the settlement—improvements to their lives, a better future for all of them.

  But only if they could get things built in time. Before the group had settled on the peninsula a few decades earlier, there had been absolutely nothing there… so there had been a lot of work ahead of them. Plumbing, electrical wiring… it all had to be done, and Timon—the oldest resident of the community—was adamant that the majority of it be done by hand, to avoid disturbing the wildlife. It was slow going, and any kind of delay made Lachlan anxious.

  He took a deep breath. Delilah could always sense it when her father was getting stressed—her huge brown eyes were fixed on his face, a shadow of his own worry reflected in them. He tried to smile, reaching down to tug gently on one of her pigtails—that always made her giggle. She had her mother’s eyes, his little girl. Sometimes he missed Sarah, too.

  He’d met Delilah’s mother five years ago, back when he’d still been living on the road. She’d been at the bar in some roadside dive he’d stopped at on a whim, and when she’d thrown her head back and laughed at something her friend had said, the way her wild, curly hair moved in the low light of the bar had absolutely entranced him. They’d danced all night, and she’d taken him home with her… and when she invited him to stay, he’d agreed, surprising even himself. He’d even told her that he was a dragon—something he’d never shared with another human being before. And a year later, she told him they were going to be a family, and he’d been so happy he hadn’t seen the look of reservation in her eyes.

  But by the time Delilah was born, the writing was on the wall. Sarah wasn’t ready to be a mother—she said so herself, gazing down at the little miracle in her arms, and that had split Lac
hlan’s heart in two. They’d tried, for a little while—but it wasn’t long before Sarah was gone. The last time he’d spoken to her, he’d had their baby daughter in his arms, trying to ease her to sleep as her mother packed a suitcase. He couldn’t help wondering, as he watched his lover leave him, whether it was something to do with him being a shifter that had driven her away.

  “Take care of her, Lachlan,” Sarah had said, and the expression on her face was some combination of sadness and relief. “You’re a great father. You two will be just fine. I’m sorry.”

  He’d left not long after Sarah had, in the end. The little apartment they’d shared was too full of memories, too full of pain. But his life had changed. The road was no place for a newborn baby, for all that Delilah seemed to love riding along on the bike, strapped to his chest. It just wasn’t safe. Not in the long term. So he’d headed for a peninsula on the west coast, where he happened to know that some extended family had settled down a few decades ago. They’d welcomed him with open arms, and his daughter, too. It had been a bit of a wrench to give up the freedom of the road, but a stable home and future for Delilah were much more important to him than roaring down the highway at a hundred miles an hour.

  And now Delilah was three, and much more of a handful than even a newborn baby had ever been. He’d hoped that when she learned to walk, she’d need a little less supervision… but it seemed that the opposite was true. He heaved a sigh, climbing the steps to one of the cottages in town.

  ”Lachlan? Everything okay?”

  The woman in the doorway shared Lachlan’s pale blue eyes—but the look of inquisitive concern was all her.

  ”Hi, Alice. No injuries,” he said quickly. She was the only doctor in the village—a knock on her door, more often than not, meant some kind of medical emergency. “But I was wondering—”

  ”You want me to babysit.”

  ”Yeah,” he said, fixing his most winning smile onto his face. But Alice was unmoved. She folded her arms, staring him down coolly.

  ”So you’ve figured out that a construction site and a toddler aren’t a great combination, something that anyone with any sense at all would have figured out just by thinking about it—”

  ”I’m a big dumb man, I know, I know. Please, Alice?”

  ”I took her all last week, Lachlan. This isn’t sustainable. I’ve got medical stuff here—sharp things, breakable things. And what if there’s an emergency? I can’t take her with me if I have to go set a broken bone or something—”

  ”I know. There’s just—there’s nobody else. Not since Francesca—”

  “She’s been gone for months, Lachie. You have to figure something else out.” Their former leader had loved taking care of Delilah—she’d always been willing to have the little girl in her office while she worked. Lachlan hadn’t realized how much he’d counted on Francesca’s babysitting until the woman had left.

  ”Basically everybody else in town is working on the tourist cottages,” Lachlan said, sighing. “I know I can’t keep asking you, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  ”Hire a nanny.” Alice was holding her phone, and Lachlan frowned at her. “Seriously. There are people whose whole job it is to look after kids. You could even find someone who could home-school her when she gets old enough.”

  ”I don’t want to hire some stranger—”

  ”She wouldn’t be a stranger. Not for long, anyway. I’m talking about a long-term professional relationship.”

  He bit his lip. “She?”

  ”Aren’t you always saying she needs more women in her life? It’s basically just me here. A nanny could be… well, not a mother, but a female role model for her. Look.” She brandished the phone. “I looked into it last week while Delilah was napping. There’s a service that matches au pairs from across the country to homes that need them. You can put in all your stuff, and they’ll show you all the possible matches in the country.”

  “Are you sure?” Lachlan took a deep breath. “A human?”

  Alice grinned. “That’s the best part. The service is shifters only. No need to worry about keeping our species secret.”

  “I guess it’s worth a shot.” Lachlan frowned, glancing down at Delilah, who was running up and down the steps to Alice’s cottage. The doctor made a lot of very good points. But could he really trust the care of his daughter to a woman he’d never met?

  Chapter 2 – Serena

  ”I’m freezing to death,” Serena complained, tugging her cardigan closer around her shoulders as she tried to burrow into the couch. “Isn’t it meant to be summer?”

  ”It’s not that cold,” Kath said, not looking up from her book. “You’re too skinny, that’s your problem. Need some insulation.”

  ”Or I need to move somewhere warm,” Serena grumbled, pulling her long red hair around her throat like a scarf. “Mexico, maybe. Or the surface of the sun.”

  ”Please don’t move to the surface of the sun. Then who would I complain to about the sexist old men I’m being forced to read?”

  Serena laughed. “There’s probably wifi on the sun. I don’t mean to complain, though. I really appreciate you letting me stay here.”

  ”My couch is yours as long as you need it, babe. You’ve had a rough few months. Least I can do.”

  Serena nodded sighing. She felt a bit pathetic, honestly, but Kath’s no-nonsense support made her feel better. It was true—it hadn’t been a great few years. She’d finished her degree in childcare a year ago. She’d expected to have a job by now—her grades were stellar, and every recommendation she had from her teachers and the families she’d worked with on placement was glowing. She got interview after interview… but somehow, once people met her, things tended to fall apart. She had a feeling she knew why… not many humans were comfortable around wolf shifters, even if they didn’t know they were wolves. It was an instinctive thing, something buried deep in their ancestry… at least, that was what Serena’s mom had always said.

  It still hurt, thinking about her mom. It had been almost a year since she’d passed away, and without her, Serena felt completely lost. They’d been so close… she’d worked so hard to support them both, and Serena had been looking forward to repaying some of that hard work by finishing her degree and getting a placement as a childcare worker that would pay well enough to support her mother into her retirement. But cancer had put an end to all of those dreams.

  Her mother was a human. Her father, Serena had been told, had been a wolf… and though he’d loved his daughter in his way, that love wasn’t enough to bridge the gap between shifter and human. His pack hadn’t been accepting of his choice of a human mate, and even his daughter—whose bright silver eyes had marked her as a wolf since her birth—wasn’t enough to sway his pack’s mind. So he’d left them… and Serena’s mother had never remarried or even dated anyone seriously.

  ”Why do I need some stinky man when I’ve got you?” she always said, her green eyes sparkling. Serena envied her mother’s green eyes. In every other way, they had been the spitting image of one another—the same long, fine-featured faces, the same thick red hair, the same slender build. But Serena’s eyes were silver. The mark of a wolf. Not that she knew much about that side of herself. Her mother’s world was the world she chose… the human world.

  But it didn’t seem very interested in choosing her. And that was why she’d reached out to a service she’d discovered online—a service that specialized in matching up professional childcare workers with families who needed nannies or au pairs with special skills. Reading between the lines of the website’s very careful ad copy, she’d realized with a shock that the service was designed to match shifters with shifter families. It was worth a shot, wasn’t it? It was clear that being a shifter wasn’t helping her career as a carer for human children… there was nothing wrong with investigating other options.

  Not that she could talk to Kath about any of that. She’d never told anyone that she was a wolf… the only person she’d ever been able
to talk to about it was her mother. And with her mother gone… well, maybe it would do her good to find some other shifters to connect with. She might learn something about herself, about a side of herself she’d never known much about.

  She checked her phone out of habit—and blinked at an unfamiliar icon on the screen. A notification—this one from the app she’d installed the previous day. The nanny service! She had a match!

  ”What’re you looking at?” Kath was looking up from her book, clearly curious about the expression on Serena’s face.

  ”Oh, just this… I signed up with this—matchmaking service?”

  ”A dating app?” Kath raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t seem like you.”

  ”No, it’s a professional—thing. For nannies and au pairs. You put your profile up, and get matched up with families…”

  ”Oh, so it’s a dating site for nannies. Gotcha.” Kath rose to her feet and joined Serena on the couch, clearly curious about the app… or at least in need of some distraction from her book. Serena moved over. She’d looked at the app enough to know that it was very discrete when it came to the details of being a shifter. She’d figured out that the various profiles were color-coded for species—blue for wolves, green for panthers, yellow for coyotes, purple for bears, red for dragons. She hadn’t even known there were panther shifters. Her mother had told her what she knew, of course, but in the end, she’d only been a human. And humans didn’t know much about shifters.

  ”It looks like a dating app,” Kath commented. “Pictures and everything. What do the colors mean?”

  Trust Kath to have such a sharp eye. Serena hesitated. “I think it’s the time commitment required or something.”

  ”So you’ve got a match? This guy, right?” Kath was the kind of person who didn’t understand personal space or boundaries. She’d already taken Serena’s phone out of her hand and was swiping through the app, examining all the job listings. “This says he lives in California.”