Page 127 of The Nanny and the Hothead
Shit! That sounded a lot sexier in his head.
He cringed, hitting the second floor in record time. “Or we can ban the woo word. The word woo,” he corrected, but there was no time to worry about the woo. He looked from his door on one side of the hallway to hers on the other side. “What do you say? Your place or mine?”
She pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle her amusement. “Who would have thought that mean old hothead Chef Mitch Elliott was actually funny and a romantic to boot?”
“Did you call me old?” he teased.
She gave him a playful shrug. “When I was eight, you were fifteen.”
“When you were twenty-one, I was only twenty-eight,” he countered.
“Only?” she purred.
Forget this! If being seven years her senior made him a serial wooer and a cradle robber, he was down with that.
“We’ll go to my place. The old man gets to decide,” he playfully growled against the shell of her ear. He strode toward the door, then stilled. Turning a doorknob while hoisting a tiny redhead proved to be more of a challenge than he’d expected. He shifted her body, trying not to drop her while maintaining a semblance ofwoo-ness.
Stupid woo!
“Need some help, hothead?” she cooed.
He stilled. “We’re back to hothead?”
“Fine,” she conceded. “Do you need some help, Mr. Woo?”
That wouldn’t work!
“Let’s stick with hothead. And yeah, I could use an assist,” he answered as they both vibrated, holding back their laughter. And Jesus! They were one hell of a pair. He almost dropped her when she leaned over to open the door. But gravity had been kind, and they hadn’t crashed to the ground. He nudged the door open with his hip. The hinges creaked their arrival, and they froze, peering down the darkened hall toward Oscar’s room.
“We can be quiet,” he whispered.
“Very quiet,” she mouthed. And hand it to Charlotte for upping the quiet factor. His loud hothead mouth could learn a thing or two. But the moment he set foot in his bedroom, the gravity of the situation set in.
He was a full-time father, and the choices he made impacted his son. “We’ll set an alarm to make sure...”
“That we’re both where we’re supposed to be at eight a.m.,” she finished.
“We’ve got this?” he whispered. He didn’t mean for it to come out as a question. Or maybe he did. Perhaps he needed to know that she wanted whatever this was as much as he did.
“We’ve totally got this,” she whispered, then caressed his cheek. Even in the darkened room, lit only by the moonlight, he could see that her expression had grown serious. “But we need to be careful, Mitch. I don’t want Oscar to get confused or…”
“Or have to worry abouthisCharlotteand his dad?” he finished, recalling how his son had referred to her in the letter.
I have a Charlotte now.
She stroked his cheek again. “Something like that. He’s doing so well. He’s off to such a good start at school. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.”
Neither did he. But the fact that she cared so much about his son made him want her even more. Still, she was right. The kid had been through so much these last few weeks. He could only imagine that it would be damned confusing to learn that his dad was shacking up with his nanny.
But he wasn’tshacking upwith the nanny. He cared for her deeply. And he wanted to protect her and…
And what? Love her? Was that even possible after a handful of days?
Gently, he set her on the bed, then slid his phone from his pocket. “The alarm is set for six—two hours before Oscar wakes up.”
“How much time does that give us?” she asked.
He set his phone on the bedside table where the lock Madelyn had given him and Oscar’s orange heart sat together. He hadn’t expected to see Oscar’s creation in his room. His son must have slipped in and put it here.
