Page 79 of The Nanny and the Nerd
“I think, to survive, you had to learn how to turn everything off.” Her gaze dropped to the box of dominoes and the Game Boy. “I think these helped.”
That was him to a tee.
“How do you know that?” he whispered.
She leaned in with that beguiling smile still in place. “You, Rowen Gale, are the classic broken hero, just like AI-77.”
“I’m no hero,” he mumbled.
In fact, he was the opposite. What had he done for anyone? Sure, he’d taken in Phoebe, but only because he had no choice. Yes, he supported his mother, but that was a financial matter. And he had more money than God. The truth was, in his quest to prove himself to the two people who’d deserved it the least, he’d focused solely on himself.
She tipped his chin, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Yes, you are a hero. To Phoebe, to your mother, and to the people you help every day with thecomputerythings you do.”
“Thecomputerythings I do?” he teased, waving off her words.
“Yes, I’ve decidedcomputeryis a word,” she countered, playfully putting him in his place.
It was intoxicating. With only a few words and that coy smile, Penelope pulled the curtain on the darkest parts of his heart and let in the light.
“What does that make you?” he asked, his voice a gravelly rumble.
“Your niece’s nanny,” she answered, breathless.
He stared into the pools of her sable eyes. “I’d venture to say you’re more than just my niece’s nanny.”
Those golden locks of hair he was starting to adore were back, kissing the apples of her cheeks and framing her face. Again, he gently tucked them behind her ear as she trembled beneath his touch.
She felt it, too—this charge between them that had been there from the moment he laid eyes on her.
“Penelope,” he whispered, saying her name like a prayer.
She closed her eyes at the sound of her name falling from his lips. “I used to hate my full name until I heard you say it.”
He leaned in close enough to grow dizzy from the scent of orange blossoms, then stroked the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, eliciting another delicious shiver from this enchanting woman. He couldn’t take it a second longer.
“I,” he rasped.
“Yes?” she whispered, her breath hot against his lips.
He pictured the words in his mind.
I want to kiss you, Penelope, and never stop.
“I want—” he tried again when every damned device on Penelope’s table jolted to life in a chorus of pings and chimes. It was like a goddamned arcade had erupted inside his house. The two of them broke apart, eyes wide.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, staring at the monitors. It wasn’t the house alarm. He knew that much.
Penelope bolted to the table. “It’s something else Phoebe helped me do. We set alarms to send an alert any time a new email came into my Gale Gaming account.”
“We cannot have that. You’ll go crazy—and I’ll go crazy,” he called over the cacophony of dings and rings as he adjusted the setting on her laptop.
“I didn’t want to miss anything, and this new email looks important,” she answered, coming to his side.
He stared at the screen as emails from Boomer, Man Bun, Goose, and Just Randy lit up her inbox, and he was reminded of why he was in Penelope’s room.
To work—not to lose himself. Not to regurgitate his sad story, then almost kiss the woman who was off-limits to him. But she was like an alluring siren—her touch, her scent, and her undeniable radiance delivered him to a place where anything seemed possible.
Another device pinged, and he stared at her worktable, searching for the source of the sound.
