Page 18 of The Billionaire's One-Night Stand Nanny
Even still, those minutes were excruciating: she’d arrived on Wednesday with her hair still damp from the shower, and I’d nearly gone insane imagining her naked under the spray. We were nothing but professional, of course, butprofessional, for a nanny, meant seeing her sitting on my couch, leaning forward to do a puzzle, her tee shirt riding up to reveal a tantalizing strip of her lower back. I wanted to slide my fingers underneath the hem and along the curve of her waist, wanted to tug the thin cotton up and over her head to kiss her perfect breasts again…
She’d given Maddie a quick hug goodbye and me an even briefer smile as she left that night, and I’d had to go stand in front of the open refrigerator for a moment to cool myself off, pretending I couldn’t find the broccoli for our dinner as Maddie chattered on about the day they’d had together.Miss Flora and I did this, Miss Flora did that, isn’t Miss Flora funny? She’s so smart, too, did you know…I was torn, constantly, between wanting to grill my daughter about her nanny and being willing to pay her cold, hard currency to never mention the nameFloraagain. I’d learned that Flora liked sweets, especially ice cream, which the two of them got frequently at a little shop near the park. She hated caterpillars, which she didn’t know until her class raised them her first year teaching. She hadn’t always wanted to be a teacher–“and actually,nowshe wants to be a nanny,” Maddie had told me with complete confidence–and had wanted to be a ballerina when she was little. I thought of the way she’d moved on top of me, graceful and unhesitating, and changed the subject abruptly.
I lifted my glass to my lips only to find it empty.
“You need another, Ryan?” Barrett asked, lifting his own empty martini glass.
I tapped one finger against the side of the tumbler, thinking. “No, I think I’m good. I’m going to head out.”
“So soon?” James asked. “On your kid-free night?”
“I know,” I grimaced. “But I’m exhausted. Going to call it early.”
“Jesus, this crew’s getting boring in our old age,” James said.
“Speak for yourself, Jamie,” Charlie shot back. “I’m just waiting for you to run home to your bride, then Barrett and I can go out to the club.”
Barrett laughed at that. “First I heard of this plan. I’m going to need another martini, if that’s what’s happening tonight.” He glanced over at the bartender, sending a subtle signal for a fresh drink. Barrett was in the restaurant industry. He tipped well and knew the back-of-house lingo, so waiters and bartenders everywhere loved him–or at least they pretended to. For all I knew, they were just afraid Barrett’s company would acquire theirs, and wanted to stay on his good side. “You’re sure you don’t want to come, Ryan? Your house will be conveniently empty tonight…” He smirked, raising an eyebrow at me.
I swallowed hard. My house had beenconveniently emptyjustlastweekend, until it had beeninconveniently full. And it wasn’t like I neededtwonannies.
But more than that…
My night with Flora had been so,sogood–no one I could pull at an overpriced club would compare to…that.
And–I tried to deny it, but I could not–toher.
Her bright eyes, that I’d now seen flash with desire and humor, her cheeks, which I’d seen flushed with arousal and the exertion of chasing my daughter around. Her hair, splayed across my pillow and windswept from a blustery spring afternoon.
Maybe I should have wanted to follow Barrett and Charlie to the club. Get some other woman underneath me to get Flora out from under my skin. But I didn’t. I hated the thought of it.
I shook my head. “No. And you two… stay out of trouble,” I said, pointing my index finger first at Charlie, then Barrett.
“Sure, Dad,” Barrett said, looking not at me, but at the martini coming his way on the tray of a white-clad waiter.
I excused myself, leaving my friends to their cocktails and heading out the door and into the muggy night air of early summer in the city. I didn’t call Daniel, my driver; I wanted to walk a little, to clear the whiskey from my head and the scent of cigars from my skin.
I trekked back to my brownstone, the familiar sidewalks of the Upper East Side passing under my feet almost without my noticing. I’d lived here my entire life.Has Flora?I thought suddenly. She didn’t seem like the girls I grew with: despite her confidence over the romances at the bookstore, her forwardness asking me to come home with her–despite the way she’d been so self-assured when we finally tumbled into my bed–she didn’t have the same cool, detached sophistication as them.
That’s because Flora is too young to be sophisticated.I felt my lips twist into a guilty grimace. But that wasn’t quite right. Tally was like that, and her friends–myfriends, our friends–and she always had been.
And I felt somehow that Flora would be the way she was–earnest and joyous and positive–even when she was Tally’s age. Thirty-six, like me. She’d have her own kid, then, would do puzzles withthem.Maybe she’d move back home, to wherever it was she came from, or maybe she’d be living in some cute little apartment. Probably in Brooklyn, I thought, smiling to myself as I reached my front steps. Williamsburg. I let myself into my empty home, tossing my keys in the China bowl on the antique table by the door. There were a pair of crumpled tickets in the bottom that muffled the sound: receipts from Wednesday, when over dinner, Maddie excitedly told me that she and Flora had spent the afternoon racing little model boats they’d rented from a pavilion next to the conservatory pond. I’d smiled: it was such asweetthing to do, innocent and childlike. It was times like these when I felt Maddie’s age–and my own–acutely, my chest tightening.
Maybe I would have another drink, after all. I went to the kitchen, shedding my jacket, and opened the fridge, looking for the beers I kept at the back and spotting an unfamiliar coffee creamer markedFlora. I stared at it. Sweet cream.
The curve of her pale hip, the softness of her inner thigh. The way she tasted as she came against my mouth.
I grabbed the beer and shut the fridge a little harder than necessary. A neon-green school lunch calendar fluttered, trying to escape its magnets before coming to rest on the stainless surface of the door again.Meatless Monday: mexiquinoa fiesta. Tuesday: roast chicken and sautéed summer squash.I read the week’s meal plan all the way over toFriday: personal pizzas, and then read it again. Mexiquinoa fiesta.What the hell was that?I tugged the calendar off the fridge door–school was over–and dropped it into the recycling.
By the time I’d finished my beer–and the half-done puzzle that Maddie and Flora had left on the coffee table–it was a respectable enough time to retreat to my bedroom. I changed out of my dress shirt and into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and wondered half-heartedly if I should have gone out with Charlie and Barrett after all.
Then I thought of Flora, in the garden, her whisperedyou should know I don’t make a habit of this. She’d sighed so sweetly as I sank into her tight warmth, and her pretty arms had wrapped around my neck, pulling me closer. My hand strayed to my cock below my sheets, and I gave myself one slow stroke, then another, coaxing myself harder, harder, as I let my mind wander, remembering–
That she was my employee. My daughter’s nanny.
I groaned, and pulled my hand away. Fuck–I wasn’t a horny teenager. I hadn’t been for a long time. I was a responsible adult, and I could not be jacking off thinking about the beautiful youngnanny, even if we had slept together.
Even if it had been great,my lustful psyche reminded me. Best I’d ever had.
