Page 134 of The Nanny and the Beefcake
Libby
“Come on,Plum! Come on, Beefcake! Let’s do this!” Sebastian called over his shoulder, laughing as he pedaled his mountain bike up the rocky incline on the meandering Crooked Mine Loop.
The trail, which would double as the Ass-in-Nine racecourse a week from today, was busier than usual. Competitors and their four-legged donkey friends had begun descending on Rickety Rock for the festivities that started up that evening. And it appeared many participants had decided to scope out the course and slip in a practice run before the sun went down.
Libby couldn’t blame them. She surveyed the trail and the picturesque landscape. In the late afternoon light, the land came alive.
Who would want to be inside with views like this?
It was late July and summer was in full swing in the mountain town. Wildflowers blanketed the sides of Rickety Rock Mountain. They’d doubled or even tripled since she, Raz, and Sebastian had arrived. And they hadn’t been spared the splendor across the valley in their Victorian on Falling Stone Road. Over the last few weeks, their little slice of heaven had become a feast for the senses. Vibrant shades of red, violet, and an array of golds and yellows burst through the mountain greenery. They cast the swaths of rocky terrain in a rainbow buffet of colors and scents.
“What do you say, Beefcake, you beastly wanker?” Raz teased, his tone breathy as he ran beside his donkey partner. “I know we’ve got this, mate. Do you think Plum and Libby can keep up with Sebastian?”
This man.
She acknowledged the challenge with a slight nod, and he tossed her what she used to call his infuriating beefcake smirk. Now the expression that once made her blood boil had her hot under the collar for a decisively different reason.
Did his handsomely self-assured face still make her want to throw vibrators at the mountain of a man?
Not exactly.
The urge to hurl sex toys at the boxer had subsided, but they hadn’t completely forgotten about the sixteen vibrating projectiles.
When the lights went out, they’d found a better use for her devices that had nothing to do with her aim and everything to do with orgasmic bliss.
She shook her head, knocking some sense into her sex-addled mind.
Eyes on the trail. This was still a training run.
Libby tightened her hold on Plum’s lead. She gave a sharphup-hupand clicked her tongue, signaling to her Jennie that it was time to kick up the pace. She could not be distracted by thoughts of sexytimes with her beefcake. “Plum and I know what to do,” she answered through shallow breaths as they rounded the bend. She clicked her tongue again, adding more speed.
Alongside Raz and Beefcake, they flew past a smattering of aspen trees and a marker that indicated they were two miles away from the trail’s technical descent. From here, they’d traverse the inclines, working their way up and down until they crossed the shallow part of the creek, dissecting the nine-mile Crooked Mine Loop.
She kept her gaze up, making sure Sebastian was a safe distance ahead of them on his bike, then chanced a look at Raz and found him stealing a glance at her. His smirk had been replaced with a grin that was only for her. There was nothing cocky or arrogant about it. This smile was boyish and heartfelt and resonated with stolen kisses and nights spent tangled in each other’s arms. Sure, he could be the beast, but there was a tender side to the man—a gentle giant dwelling in his rock-hard, muscled body.
A breathlessness took over that had nothing to do with sprinting and everything to do with thoughts of their secret nightly rendezvous.
This had become their life in Rickety Rock.
They’d fallen into it like puzzle pieces clicking into place.
Augie would arrive at dawn, and he and Raz would spend six hours in the gym training hard. They followed a strict schedule. Augie had arranged for sparring partners to come to the house, and the trainer kept Raz on his toes with drills and weight training sessions. She and Sebastian didn’t rise quite as early, but they’d take their breakfast outside onto the porch where they could watch and listen in on the training sessions.
And Buddha, help her. Gobbling down cereal next to her favorite almost seven-year-old while watching a shirtless Erasmus Cress move with raw power, his muscles slick with sweat and glistening in the morning light, was one cosmically sensational way to start the day.
Putting aside the fact that the man was truly a thick slice of hotness, her beefcake was athletic poetry in motion.
His focus and dogged determination were visible with every punch, every rotation of the jump rope, and each clang and bang of weights. Sounds that once made her want to bang the living daylights out of her gong now signified the man’s resolve to win.
But that didn’t mean she’d become professional boxing’s biggest fan.
She still didn’t like the idea of fighting and certainly didn’t condone gambling as a pastime, but she viewed the sport differently now. With Sebastian explaining the maneuvers and breaking down the intricacies of the combinations, what once looked like a pair of men begging for brain damage had become a technical dance—a choreographed combat that required as much mental strength as physical prowess.
But her pint-sized partner in Pun-chi yoga wasn’t always by her side. Sebastian attended the Bergen Summer Adventure Day Camp twenty minutes away in Aspen with Phoebe and Oscar during the weekdays. The trio were as thick as thieves, laughing and chatting as they waited to be picked up each day. And that led to another part of her day that put a smile on her face. There was nothing like watching the boy spot her in a crowd of parents, grin that sweet toothy grin, then run toward her, arms wide open, ready for a hug.
But she wasn’t only the nanny.
She wore two hats in this household.
