Page 99 of The Nanny and the Nerd
She nodded, unable to speak as she tried to read him, searching his expression for a flash of doubt or a glint of pain.
“I meant it, Penelope,” he said, eyes smoldering. “Every word.”
“Okay,” she breathed. Her heart was all in, but her head and her writer’s mind still had questions.
But she knew one thing for sure, and Phoebe’s missed school science experiment provided the perfect metaphor.
This trip would test who they were to each other.
There were only two options: float or sink.
Twenty
Rowen
“Rowen,we can’t do this! Not here!”
He gazed at Penelope’s sun-kissed face and took in her tousled mane of blond wavy hair. Her usual orange blossom scent was complemented by a hint of sea salt and fresh ocean air. It was a heady mix, and over the last five days, he’d found he couldn’t get enough of it.
Yachting life agreed with Penelope Fennimore. Well, not just Penelope. This escape to the Caribbean waters surrounding St. Barts suited them all. Phoebe had earned the trip with her stellar spelling performance. But this jaunt to the tropics gave him a chance to do something that had been rattling around in his mind since he’d explained the importance of cut scenes to Penelope. An integral part of modern gaming, this gaming element provided the player time to rest, reset, and remember why they’d started the journey.
He’d never taken a moment to reflect on what he’d done—on what he’d become and who had been with him along the way.
Here’s an obvious statement: Rowen Gale wasn’t the easiest person to work for. With his sensory challenges and rigid routines, he understood this. And that’s why, when he and Phoebe began planning the trip, he decided to invite Jerome and his husband along. The man had been with him through the start-up phase. And while he was happy to reward his loyal assistant, he did have a slight ulterior motive.
He had a nanny. But for this trip, he needed a nanny (or nannies, in this case) to fill in for the nanny.
Jerome and David adored Phoebe. And his niece was as crazy about them as she was about Penelope, which meant, when his niece was occupied with Jerome and David, he could be occupied with Penelope.
And thank the sea gods, Jerome and David had delivered! He’d found plenty of opportunities to becomeoccupiedwith Phoebe’s nanny over and over again.
And who could blame him?
No nerd on the planet would pass up yacht sex with a Princess Amelia lookalike. But there was more, so much more to Penelope. She wasn’t only beautiful. She got him. His quirks, his obsessive need to oversee his tech empire—she didn’t begrudge him for any of it! And that’s where the paradox began. He knew that if he wanted to slip away to work, he could do it. But this permission had the opposite effect. He couldn’t quite put it together. It wasn’t a linear A equals B equation. He hadn’t checked his email since they’d arrived in St. Barts, and he was good with that.
He focused on the woman who had changed everything for him. He brushed aside her hair, then pressed a kiss below her earlobe. “What do you mean, we can’t do this? We’ve been doing an awful lot ofthisall week,” he replied with another kiss.
“We’re in the middle of playing hide-and-seek with your niece. We could be found at any moment!” she whisper-shouted with an adorable poke to his chest. He dropped another kiss to her shoulder, and her apprehension dissolved as she hummed a sexy, satisfied little sound.
“You’re the one who said we should hide in this snug space between the steam room and the towel rack,” he replied, taking her salty-sweet earlobe between his teeth.
She released a breathy moan. “I suggested we hide in the gym. You’re the one who saw the steam room and got all…”
“All what?” he rasped, gripping her slim hips.
She pressed her palms to his bare chest, and the contact sent an electric pulse through his body. “All this,” she purred, then gave him the naughtiest of smirks before sliding her hands down his torso and palming his rock-hard cock.
“I thought you said no messing around?” he teased, his voice a low rumble.
“It is an awfully big boat. We probably have at least a few minutes to ourselves,” she replied, going all naughty nanny.
And she wasn’t wrong.
The yacht was an obscene behemoth of a sea vessel. He’d never be too rich to admit that.
His adoptive parents had been schoolteachers. And while he and Andrew had never wanted for anything, Cecelia and Ogden Gale sure as hell weren’t whisking them off to cruise the Caribbean on a superyacht. Equipped with seven luxury staterooms, a gym, complete with a giant glass steam room enclosure, a spa, a twenty-foot-long pool, multiple sundecks, plush lounging areas, and even included a room so large it could be transformed into a damned disco, this superyacht he’d purchased as an investment was a beast of a watercraft. Oh yeah, there was also room for fifteen crew members.
Calling the yacht abig boatwas most certainly an understatement.
