Page 47 of The Nanny and the Nerd
He crossed his arms. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. It was a terrible error in judgment,” he finished as Penelope’s gaze dropped to the ground.
Jesus! What was he doing?
That was easy to answer. He was doing what he had to do.
He took a step back, then another, before heading toward his office. He was an idiot—a goddamned idiot, but it had to be this way.
“Rowen?” she called, the word hovering in the air like her perfume, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t even acknowledge the utterance.
What was the point?
This moment of weakness couldn’t happen again. He had too much on the line. And more than that, he had nothing to give her besides a job. A woman like Penelope deserved a man who could open his heart to her.
He would never be that man.
That was the cold, hard truth.
And there was only one option for him now.
Ten
Penny
“How many dayshas it been since you’ve seen him?” Charlotte asked in a hushed tone.
Penny held her flip phone between her ear and her shoulder as she sat on the end of her bed and zipped up her boots. Indignation churned in her belly at the reminder of the last several days. “Seven days,” she answered, not that she was counting.
Okay! She was counting, but she wasn’t about to admit it.
And, yes, she still usedherphone.
It worked fine, and after what had happened in the hallway, the last thing she wanted was to use the guy’s fancy phone. Sure, she lived in his house, drove his damned Lamborghini, ate his tasteless protein bars, and cared for his niece. But she had no control over those parts of her life. Her job required she reside in his home, and her Jeep was still with the mechanic. And she wasn’t sure her car would ever be safe for Phoebe, who still required a booster seat and, by the way, was the absolute best part of the job. She’d barely been the little girl’s nanny for a week, and already she couldn’t imagine life without the sassy little thing, double-tapping her foot at half of Denver.
Oh, and there was one other thing. The damned reason that loomed over every part of her life. The reason why her mother and Thomas Edison wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace.
She needed the money.
And like clockwork, she’d received a payment notification this morning that her first week’s salary had been deposited into her account. The girl who’d gotten used to negative balance notifications now had a hefty little sum at her disposal. Even if Rowen fired her after the sixty-day trial period, she would have saved enough cash to fix her laptop, rent a studio apartment, and write for a few months before having to worry about getting another crappy job.
The operative word, however, waswrite. She’d had ample time to hone her craft while Phoebe was at school, but nothing had come to her—not a line of dialogue or a creative plot twist.
Even with time to dedicate to her story, her writers’ block wouldn’t let up.
“Penn Fenn!” Harper whisper-shouted through the phone. “What’s going on with your hot nerd weirdo?”
Penny scoffed. “He’s not my hot nerd weirdo,” she replied.
“But last we talked, you said he wasn’t there. Did he leave town on the same night you came to live with him?” Charlotte pressed.
“Kind of,” she answered. It was a bullshit answer. A resounding yes would have sufficed.
Penny checked her hair in the mirror, tucked an errant lock into her makeshift bun, then focused on her brown eyes. No, not brown, sable. In the basement garage, Rowen had stared into her eyes as if the guy wanted to set up a permanent residence there, then spouted the sweetest, nerdiest info on heredity and eye color. A chill danced down her spine at the thought of that night.
And that kiss.
God, that kiss!
She would have sworn that she’d seen the man behind the robotic veneer. A man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. A man who loved his niece and was trying to give her what she needed. That’s why she’d wrapped her arms around him, why she’d been so compelled to reach out. After they’d left Phoebe’s room and she’d learned the details around his mother’s stroke and Phoebe’s trauma, that part of her that wanted to make everything all right couldn’t hold back. She’d meant it as a kindness—she had. But thoughts of compassion had dissolved when he gripped her hips and pulled her close. The second she felt his arousal, a spark ignited. And there was no turning back.
