Page 50 of Give & Take

My stomach does a little baby rattle. This is better. I was going to go up to his door to talk to him, but having this talk on my turf is better.

Things have been weird with us all week, ever since the date incident last Friday. And it’s my fault.

I haven’t set the right kind of boundaries. He’s been the perfect nanny. Beyond perfect. My kids are falling into bed each night happy and exhausted. Aurora was so cute tonight talking about how amazing the day was, even though she barfed at the end. “Please don’t get Raph in trouble,” she mumbled before she fell asleep. “He’s my friend.”

My heart just about cracked wide open at that.

If he were anyone else, I’d be singing his praises. Even with the too-many-donuts incident. I was upsetabout that earlier, sure. But it’s happened to the best of us. Nova threw up after overdoing it with Mac’s birthday cake earlier this year.

But he didn’t start out as the nanny. He started out as a guy who was…checking me out. He flirts with me shamelessly.

He stands up for me on bad dates.

It doesn’t matter how all of that makes me feel; it’s just not appropriate behavior from my nanny.

I need to set some boundaries. At a couple weeks into this venture, they’re long overdue, and now’s the perfect time to do it. I’ll do it while he’s doing his laundry so we won’t have to look directly at each other. Because I lose myself when I look directly at Raphael. I steel myself with a couple of bracing breaths, then head down the stairs.

Except when I round the corner to the laundry room, I freeze.

Raphael’s got his arms crossed in front of him, his face tilted down. I watch, in silent horror, as he lifts his shirt up, face obscured in white cotton, bare chest exposed in front of me.

Instead of jumping back out of the doorway and waiting for him in the kitchen like a normal person, I become completely paralyzed, like my body’s stuck in cement.

Except for my eyes.

My eyes trail down his tanned upper body, catching on every plane and ridge of his chest. I travel past the pendant, past a little scar on his sternum. Down overeach one of his abs, one by one by one, all the way down to the waistband of his jeans.

Theopenwaistband of his jeans, the elastic band of his shorts clearly visible, dark hair disappearing behind it like?—

“Jesus!” Raph shouts, jumping backward.

I blink. Raph stares at me with alarm.

“Shit!” I exclaim. I flip around the corner, leaning back against the wall for support, mortification washing through me in deep waves.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”

I’m supposed to be having a conversation with this man about boundaries!

Raphael appears in the hallway, his hair tousled and flopping over his shoulder. He’s pulled a new shirt on.

He’s lit up on one side by the glow of the laundry room light, but the rest of him is in shadow.

He looks so fucking beautiful. And his scent…there’s laundry detergent, but also he must have showered since he got home. I recognize the cedary smell of his?—

Fuck.

“I saw your underwear!” I groan, like an absolute lunatic.

Raphael could do many things at this point. He could smirk. He could laugh at me, give me one of his totally inappropriately flirty lines. Christ, he could close the couple of feet between us and hook his finger through my belt loop and pull me to him, and I might be too stunned to do anything but go so very willingly.

And this time it would be absolutely my fault.

But he doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, he does up the button on his pants, which only draws my eyes down, my mouth dry with the intimacy of what I’m seeing.

I pinch my eyes shut.

“Sorry,” he says. “I was—you were—I heard you upstairs, and these clothes, I went too long between washes.”

---