Page 8 of The Billionaire's One-Night Stand Nanny
“What’s she like?” I asked, to fill the silence.
“Who, my ex?” He laughed, incredulous, pulling out the milk, putting it and a small sugar bowl on the table in front of me.
That startled a laugh out of me, too. “No, your daughter. Maddie?” I asked, tipping my head at the certificate that bore her name.
The change in his face was a subtle one: a softness in his eyes, a faint crinkle at the corners that told of lots of laughter. His lips twitched into a smile. I smiled down at my coffee as I stirred in milk and sugar. I rarely interacted with my students’ parents, and even more rare were the parents that looked likethatwhen I asked about their kids. God, Ryan really would beperfect–now that I had confirmed that the hundred-book set of easy chapter books on fairies weren’t his own pleasure reading–if only he weren’t old enough to be the father of one of my students. “She’s a good one,” he said, and I thought for a moment that he was just going to leave it at that. “Best thing that ever happened to me. Even if she is a bit of a… a handful. I have a hell of a time keeping a nanny around.”
“High energy?” I asked, and he chuckled.
“Opinionated.She wears them down. Our most recent one just quit.” He sighed and was quiet for a long moment as he settled at the table behind his own mug. “And she wassucha quiet baby.”
I tipped my head back and laughed.
This might have been the worst week of my life, I thought as I drank perfect coffee in a warm kitchen in a beautiful home across from a handsome older man,but this? This was undoubtedly the best one-night stand ever.
The only problem was that although IknewI couldn’t stay…
Looking at him this morning, with the memory of last night still lingering in the base of my spine, I desperately wanted to.
CHAPTER5
Ryan
It had been…well,too longwasn’t the right phrase for it. Now that I was faced with the morning after, I was reminded why I didn’t do this more frequently. It had been a long time, and I wasout of practice. What was I supposed to say to the beautiful young woman sitting across the table from me, drinking coffee with milkandsugar? Somehow, she looked even more beautiful this morning, slightly rumpled and bare-faced, than she had been at last night’s party.
Andyoung. The lip of the coffee cup pressed against her full pink lips, the steam rising up past similarly full pink cheeks and long, pale lashes, and my guts twisted with the self-destructive desire to ask exactly how old she was. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? But too young for me, that was certain.Fuck.She looked up at me and smiled, and I forced my face into a matching expression. Not a day over twenty-five, I was sure, andwaytoo perky for this hour of the morning. I glanced at my wrist out of habit before remembering that my watch was sitting on the bedside table, right next to a box of condoms. I’d had to discreetly double-check the expiration date before rolling one on last night.Not only am I too old forher, I’m too old forthis, I thought with a grimace as I checked the time on the grandfather clock in the hallway. Nine o’clock. I had an hour until Tally would be here with Maddie. Just enough time to get Flora out of here.
Except that I want her to stay, my brain supplied dreamily, and I shook my head to clear the lingering fog of afterglow. Just because the sex had been incredible–certainly the best one-night stand I’d ever had, and probably the best sex, period–didn’t mean that I could start arelationshipwith Flora. No. I’d call her a cab and have just enough time to shower off before my daughter arrived and I could get back to what really mattered: Maddie. My relationship with her was the most important one in my life; it had to be. I was lucky that my relationship with her mother, my ex-wife, was friendly, but I had no expectation of a great romance with Tally, with Flora, with anyone. Maddie was my priority.
“Thanks again,” she said, and I snapped my head up to meet her gaze. Her eyes weresoblue, and it only added to her appearance of youthful effervescence. “For last night. I had fun.”
I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped my chest. Her eyes narrowed.
“What?” she asked, suspicious.
“Nothing. I had fun, too.”Too much fun.
She tipped her coffee cup up and I watched her throat move under her soft, pale skin as she swallowed the last drop, wishing I’d been bold enough to mark her, to send her back into the world with a bruise shaped like my kiss. Something to remember me by as she went back to her normal life. Whatever it was that twenty-somethings did. I dropped my gaze from her neck to her breasts, pushing against the fabric of her sundress, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. God, she was gorgeous, even–or maybe especially–undone and effortless as she was this morning.
She needed to leave before I did anything stupid, like drag her into the showerwithme. But when she opened her pretty mouth again to speak, I couldn’t help the way my stomach sank at her words.
“I’ll get going, then,” she said as she set the coffee cup back on the table. “It was nice meeting you, Ryan.”
I nodded, feeling unaccountably disappointed even as she stood up purposefully, and I followed suit, pushing my chair back. What, did I want her to ask me to buy her brunch? Something–I wanted to say it was my heart, but it was likely just my cock–longed to keep her close to me, to pull her into my arms and taste her again, to ask her to dinner. To leave that bruise this time.
But my rational brain understood it was better she didn’t ask.
I’d have to turn her down.
It was better this way.
“Let me call you a cab,” I said, and she smiled back as she plucked her cardigan from the back of the sofa. She shrugged it on, and I was half-thankful and half disappointed as the cotton knit swallowed up those delicious breasts of hers, those lightly freckled shoulders.
“Thanks. And good luck with the nanny search,” she added, and I laughed as she followed me toward the door.
“Thanks, I’ll need it.”
We’d made it halfway to the door when–
