: Chapter 6

It’s nearing ten-thirty when I pull into my driveway that night. I was in court for the majority of the day foregoing lunch, so not only am I exhausted, but starving and in a foul mood. The reminder that my nanny is also a built-in chef does manage to lift my spirits slightly when I walk through the door and can smell whatever she cooked. The house is mostly quiet but I do hear the low sounds of the television in the living room making me wonder who is in there.

I swear to God it better not be SJ.

I set my briefcase down and move through the kitchen toward my living room to see Elianna on the couch watching what looks like a true crime documentary. “Hey,” I say.

She jumps and presses her hand to her chest as her eyes dart to mine, wide and unblinking before she lets out a deep breath. “Oh my God, hi.”

“Sorry, I figured you heard me come in.”

“No,” she points at the television, “and these always make me a little jumpy.” She looks back at what she’s watching and then up at me and I notice that her face is completely void of makeup making her look even younger than usual. And still gorgeous as hell. She’s underneath a blanket so I can’t exactly make out what she’s wearing, besides a loose t-shirt that hides her curves and I find myself thinking about what’s beneath it. I chastise myself for not the first time today, for thinking about Elianna that way.

“I like to be in a central place until a parent gets home, just so I don’t miss anything. I also find that kids feel a little intimidated in the beginning looking for me in my bedroom…” she rambles.

I shake my head to stop her and also stop myself from ogling her further. “You don’t have to explain to me why you’re watching television out here instead of in your room. You can do whatever you want, Elianna. Don’t let me interrupt you either. I’m just going to heat up whatever you cooked. Smells great by the way.”

“Oh, great. I hope you like it. The kids certainly did. I think everyone is asleep, even Margot. She was exhausted when she got home from practice.”

“How was SJ’s first day with the school shrink? Did he say anything?” I ask her and I watch as she pauses her show and pulls out her phone.

“We, quote, ‘spent most of the time talking about my feelings about Mom. How I’m handling it and if I am talking about her and my feelings enough. They understand I am going through a tough time blah blah blah. Nothing I haven’t heard before.’” She looks up at me. “End quote.”

I can’t stop the smile from pulling at my lips from her making detailed notes on SJ’s response. “Sounds like my son.”

“He seemed okay though. Maybe a little annoyed? But since it was his first day, I did take him and Isla for donuts after I picked him up and he perked up a bit after that.”

“Before dinner?” I respond jokingly, shocked that she doesn’t have a strict ‘no sweets before dinner’ policy.

She winces guiltily. “Well—”

I chuckle, realizing that she did not pick up on my humor, and shake my head at her, to stop her from explaining herself. “Elianna, I’m kidding. I’m sure there have been days when my kids have had a mountain of sugar for dinner.”

“I told them it wouldn’t be an everyday thing, but everyone had a good day and those should be celebrated sometimes.”

I nod, feeling grateful for what feels like the tenth time today that I have some help with Isla and SJ, and head toward the kitchen when I hear her footsteps behind me. “Isla asked about a sleepover this weekend with Sabrina? I told her I would talk to you.”

“That’s fine with me…” I turn to look at her as I pull what I think was meant to be a plate for me out of the refrigerator. I point at it and she nods with a smile. “Are you okay with having another child here?”

“Oh yes, definitely, but…she wants to go to Sabrina’s house,” she says and I wonder why she suddenly appears nervous. “I just…I wasn’t sure if you let her stay over at other children’s houses yet?” I pull off the cellophane and put the plate in the microwave.

“Oh, well if it’s just to Sabrina’s house then yes, they live right down the street and I know her parents well. Her mom was Bianca’s best friend.” Realizing she may not know who exactly that is, I clarify, “Bianca was their mom.”

“Right. Okay, good to know. Does Sawyer have any houses that he’s automatically allowed to go to? It’s just easier for me if I know these things ahead of time.”

“Any of his close friends are fine, but they all typically want to come here because of the pool and the game room in the basement.” I pour myself a glass of wine from the bottle I opened a few days ago. “Do you want a glass?”

“No, thanks.” She shakes her head.

“Okay, don’t feel like you can’t. I trust you know your limits and the kids are asleep.”

“Well, thank you, but I’m also not a big wine drinker. I much prefer beer or…tequila,” she jokes.

“Ah, I remember that age.”

“Can you?” she asks with a cheeky grin and I narrow my eyes at her.

“The cracks on my age are not well received, Elianna. I am not that old.” I pin her with a scolding glare and I’m grateful that she can sense my humor this time because a giggle escapes her lips.

I hope she doesn’t think I’m that old.

“My apologies,” she says.

I wish I didn’t notice the sound of that breathy laugh or how it sends a surge of blood south and a lustful flash across my mind of her on her knees in front of me. Not only is she beautiful and smart with a hint of fire but she is fucking sweet and it’s a dangerous combination that makes my dick hard. I have been on auto-pilot, operating on survival mode since Bianca died, and for the first time in a year, my dick, which had been previously comatose, seems to be coming to life at the thought of my kids’ nanny’s pouty lips wrapped around it.

I try to keep my eyes off of her mouth, but the smile pulling at her lips drags my gaze to them. I haven’t slept with another woman in over a year and suddenly I am hyper-aware of that fact.

No, I told River that she was off-limits. That means she has to be off-limits to me as well.

“Are you alright?” she asks, breaking me from my thoughts. “You’re staring and your food is ready.” Sure enough, the microwave is beeping and my eyes are still trained on her.

I shake my head and turn away. “Sorry, I’m just thinking about something I meant to do before I left work for the day.” I grab the food from the microwave. “I didn’t mean to interrupt what you were watching. You’re welcome to go back to your show.”

She nods before disappearing, leaving me alone to eat like I do most nights. I don’t hate it, but part of me wishes she’d taken a seat and talked to me about how the rest of the day went just to fill the silence. It doesn’t take long before I’m finished eating and moving back toward the living room to find her engrossed in her show again.

“Dinner was great. Thank you. How’d you learn to cook like…that?” I narrow my eyes at her because, from two dishes alone, I can tell that she didn’t learn from only a cookbook. It was the kind of cooking that came more from instinct than words on paper.

“My mom and grandma were and are both great cooks. They both kind of taught me and when my mom got sick, she would walk me through a lot of dishes so I could learn how to do it. She could have written them down, but that wasn’t how she learned and she used to say cooking was all about feeling. After she died, I still had my grandma who taught me a lot and I’ll still call her if I’m stuck.” She smiles but then her smile falls slightly. “Sorry, I guess that was kind of the long way to say family.” She giggles and I only allow myself a minute to fixate on how she glows when she talks about her family.

“I’m happy to hear the long way. Does your grandma still live in Ohio?”

“She does, strong as a bull. Fairly certain she’ll outlive me.”

I smile at her joke though I see through her attempt at humor tailing after her comment about her mother’s death. “I’m sorry about your mom. I don’t think I said that when you first mentioned it in your interview, but I am…sorry.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widen and she averts her gaze back to the television. I notice that she blinks her eyes a few times before turning back to me. “It was a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t make it any less sad or me any less sorry.”

I don’t stay in the living room for long. I didn’t want to encroach on Elianna’s private time and I did still have some work to do. So, after changing out of my clothes and checking on the kids, I’m sitting in my office when Elianna walks by on the way to her room.

“Did you…clean in here?” I ask her, having noticed the vacuum lines and the faint smells of Lysol and Windex. She hadn’t touched anything on my desk but I did notice the shiny glass of my sliding glass door and the mirror in the corner. Not to mention the shininess of my mahogany coffee table.

“Oh yes, would you prefer I not come in here? The door was open and I was vacuuming…” she winces. “I’m sorry, I should have asked.”

“Please don’t apologize,” I tell her, wishing she’d stop explaining herself for everything. “Thank you.” I look down at my desk. “And for not moving anything around on my desk. If there’s ever a time I don’t want anyone in here, the door will be locked.”

“Got it.”

“Should I even bother keeping my housekeeper twice a week?” I ask her.

She takes a tentative step inside my office. “Well, it’s just, with everyone in school…” She lets out a breath and puts her hands on her hips. “I’ve never nannied full-time during the school year. It’s always been during the summer when the kids are always around so I always had something to keep me busy. I didn’t…really have anything to do after I prepared for dinner.”

“Don’t you have homework? For your class?”

“I already did that,” she tells me, and although I shouldn’t be surprised based on what I know about her, I am shocked at her ability to balance so many things with ease.

“Are you always so on top of everything? All the time?”

Her lips form a straight line and she nods. “Yeah, kinda.” She shrugs, “I’ve always had to be. Just with my sisters and my dad and…everything. Then when I started taking care of other people’s children…it just stuck.”

“What do you do to relax? Do you know how to relax?” I chuckle and she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Don’t you work like eighty hours a week?” she retorts.

I chuckle at the fact that she doesn’t exactly have a filter and says whatever is on her mind.

“Not when I was twenty-five.” I snort. “No, when I was twenty-five…” I trail off, trying to remember what I was doing at her age. “Well, I was about to be a father, but Bianca and I had fun before that. Probably too much of it.”

“I have fun,” she counters. “I go out with my friends sometimes, but it’s hard to do that when you’re a full-time nanny.”

“You can have time off for yourself, Elianna. I don’t expect you to be on call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.”

“I know. You’ve given me two weekends off a month and every Wednesday evening when I have to go to campus. Trust me, that’s more than I usually get.”

“You can have more than that if you need it. Trust me, you’re already helping me out a lot.”

She shakes her head as if the idea is ridiculous. “It’s my job.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I can still appreciate it.”

She chuckles and rolls her eyes. “You really are a first-timer with the whole nanny thing. Talk to me the next time you hire one. I bet you’ll be much tougher.”

“Next time? Planning your exit already?” I ask, my eyes wide and a bit terrified that she’s already thinking of leaving.

“No!” She shakes her head. “I just mean…” she starts and then bites her lip.

“I hope you know you can’t leave until Isla is eighteen,” I say with a hint of humor though part of me hopes she’ll just agree to that and we can end this whole conversation.

“Eighteen!” she says. “You will not need me until she’s eighteen. Isla is…” She hesitates and I see something fleeting pass over her eyes, but I don’t know her well enough to know what that’s about. “She’s going to be fine.” She clears her throat. “I meant, you know, you might meet someone. I will always be willing to help out, but I may not need to live here full-time, you know? Also, that’s twelve years from now and I’d like to think maybe I’d be married or something by then and maybe I would have kids of my own and not still be doing this?” She shrugs. “Who knows?”

“That’s fair,” I tell her. In twelve years she’ll be thirty-seven and the expectation that she’d devote the next decade of her life to my children might be unreasonable. “Not about me meeting someone necessarily, but the other things you mentioned.”

“You could meet someone if you got out more. I hope you’ll take advantage of having me here and maybe go out some. With your brother or maybe friends? A lady friend?” She raises her eyebrows up and down and I can’t help but laugh at her animation.

“You sound like River. I don’t have time for that.” I’ve dated some in the past year but nothing past a first date and no one-night stands. I’m not unfamiliar with the concept, but the way River goes through them, it seems like they’ve just gotten more complicated since I’ve gotten older.

“Make time.” Her brows pinch together like she’s preparing to scold me. “Come on, you’re getting on me about relaxing.”

I steeple my hands beneath my chin. “Which by the way, you still have not told me what relaxing activities you do.”

She huffs. “I like to read, and I go for runs sometimes, and I get massages. I also like to shop.” She lists them off on her fingers.

“Oh, Margot will love that.” I groan thinking about the last time I let Margot loose in a mall with my credit card without giving her a budget. I had four missed calls from American Express in the span of one hearing.

“Yes, I assume that is how we’ll really bond.” She smiles, though from what I heard this morning, it seems as if they’ve already sort of bonded and I can’t believe it only took my kids two days to accept her. I didn’t expect anything less from Isla, and SJ is always fifty-fifty on whether he’ll like someone, but Margot is usually wary about new people. “What do you do to relax?”

“Have twenty minutes of peace and quiet,” I tell her. “Sleep when I have time.” She looks at me horrified and I chuckle. “I do like to read. Thrillers mostly.” I point to the patio on the other side of the glass door. “I go out there and have a cigar every once in a while, and just…take a breather, I guess.”

“What did you do before you had them full-time?” she asks me.

“I’d golf with River. Sometimes we’d go fishing. And yes, we would go out sometimes, but then I made partner and started working more, and then Bianca died and…I had so little free time that whatever time I did have, I spent with them. And even still it’s not nearly enough.”

“I get that,” she whispers. “My dad didn’t do much outside of raising us either.”

“He’s still in Ohio?”

“Yes,” she answers. “I really worry about him. He lives by himself and I just…I wish he’d dated more when I was younger. Now, he’s older and he rarely goes out and I just feel like he’s lonely with all of us out of the house. He devoted so much of his life to us and now…” She trails off. “I feel like he gave us the best years of his life and now he’s older and too tired to do anything else.” She snaps her eyes to me and her eyes widen like maybe she hadn’t meant to say all of that.

“I’ll bet he doesn’t feel like that at all. I’ll bet he thinks it was the best years of his life because he had you three.”

Her eyes soften and I watch as her eyebrows pinch slightly before she continues. “My sister, Emily, checks in on him a lot. I’m glad she’s still there.”

“Elianna and Emily…” I ask her, thinking about my parents who had a plan to give all of their children R names before a complicated second pregnancy made it so only two was an option. “Any chance there’s a third E name?”

“Eden. My youngest sister.”

“She’s in college…at Yale, right?”

She purses her lips and tilts her head to the side. “So, Sawyer’s nosy line of questioning was really for you?”

“No, but SJ is chatty and wants to know everything. Mostly for leverage.” I lean back in my chair, my work completely forgotten as I talk to her. I haven’t felt this relaxed in ages and I don’t know if it’s from having another adult around or if it’s her. “He mentioned that if you ever went to visit her, maybe we could go with you to look around.”

“So, he is interested. He said you want him looking at all the Ivy League schools.”

“I do, but mostly I want him to be happy. I don’t want to force him into anything like my parents did to me.” She frowns at my choice of words and though I don’t have the energy to go down this road, I opt to give her the cliff notes. “My dad is a lawyer; I was the oldest son…” I wave my hand. “You know the story.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar.” She nods. “River didn’t want to do the same?”

“Hell no, and River wasn’t expected to do anything except be the baby.” I snort. “I love him to death but he didn’t have half the pressure.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It used to, but no.” I shake my head. “And to be honest, if River was a lawyer too, I’d truly be fucked. The flexibility of his schedule has saved my life.” I chuckle before continuing. “And even when it did bother me, I never blamed him for the differences in what was expected of us. He’s been my built-in best friend since he was born.”

She puts a hand over her heart. “That’s so sweet!”

“Don’t tell him that though. He’s still a pain in my ass.”

“I imagine.”

“Are you close with your sisters?”

She rubs her forehead before she takes a seat in the chair in front of my desk. “It’s complicated.” I don’t say anything while I wait for her to continue. “My younger sister Emily…” She twists her mouth. “She thinks I try to be her mom.” She swallows. “And maybe I did. Obviously not now, but when she was sixteen and pregnant and I dropped out of college to help her, I probably did.” She shrugs. “But she was scared and we didn’t have a mom and I only knew one way to take care of Emily and Eden and it probably was too motherly. Maybe a part of me resented her because I thought they were going to be fine when I left and then as soon as I did everything fell apart. I figured she’d do for Eden what I’d done for them both and I was disappointed that she didn’t.” She leans back in her chair and looks up at me. “I probably pushed too hard and now our relationship is…fine, but it’s not what it could be.” She fidgets with her fingers in her lap and gives me a shy smile. “We’re getting deep here.”

“I don’t hate it.”

Her big brown eyes meet mine before she looks toward my computer and then the papers all over my desk.

“I should leave you. I know you’re busy and I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She gets up from the chair.

“You didn’t,” I tell her, wishing that she didn’t feel the sudden urge to leave. I want to learn more about her and something tells me she doesn’t talk about her relationship with her sister much. “I’m here if you ever want to talk more…about that.”

She hesitates before nodding and leaving my office.