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Love Under Lockdown Book 4
Chapter One - Dean
From the moment the plane’s tires touched down on the tarmac, I was seized by an impending sense of dread. I was back home in New York City and not for any reason I wanted to be.
Plus, there was the crisis that the world was in, and New York was the epicenter of the virus. If it wasn’t for my money, there was no way I could set foot on American soil. Only by sneaking in on my own jet did I avoid the long lines and the likely-hood of quarantine. I couldn’t do that, not yet. I had a promise to fulfill first.
There were so many advantages to living in London. The lack of snow for a start. Sure, there was the rain, but a drizzle never kept an affair from starting as far as I was aware. My accent was considered charming rather than a punchline as it was in most parts of my homeland. There was just something about being from Brooklyn that was considered universally hilarious among Americans. Or, 'yanks', as I had come to think of them. Though I did eventually acquire a pretty close approximation of an upper-class British accent.
Britain, or at least the England portion of it, also had five meals a day. The standard three plus two so-called 'tea-times' which were more like light lunches. And no one looked at you sideways for having sausages and bacon at breakfast.
They also had respect for their elders, dagnabbit! I was only thirty-three, yet kids in their late-teens would routinely call me 'sir.' It was both a wonderful tip of the hat and a terrible reminder of one's fragile mortality in the same three-letter word. Not that death was far away from one’s mind during these turbulent times.
Aside from the cultural advantages, another thing that made London so much more tolerable was the nearly endless list of people who did not live there. My asshole brother and my bastard dad, for example. My ruthless social climber of a mother who seemed to equate marrying into old money with joining the aristocracy. All nowhere to be found among the skyscrapers and spires of Olde London Town.
The problem. The unspoken pain. The ghost in the room was my beloved sister, Simone. Not only did she not live in London, or indeed New York. As a result of recent events, she was no longer living on the physical plane at all. I liked to think about it in metaphysical terms. It helped things to hurt less.
In Simone's place was her six-year-old daughter, Jessica, whom I was given legal guardianship. The coin there was two definite sides. On the one side was the fact that my sister trusted me to raise her offspring. No small thing, even to a fuck up like me. On the other hand, I had absolutely no fucking idea how to raise a kid. Let alone a little girl. Simone was always more of a mom to me than our actual mother, so I never really learned the whole nurturing thing.
I could have been in a real predicament, but Simone, who knew me better than anyone else on earth, also arranged for help. The resume that accompanied her last will and testament contained a picture. A gorgeous, twenty-three-year-old nanny named Becky Hump.
As I got in my limo, I smiled. Simone always did have a sense of humor.
A few hours later, I got to meet Miss Hump, when she showed up at the mansion I also, unfortunately, inherited from my sister.
“You must be Dean,” Becky said, darkening the doorway of my new home.
The less said about the built-in innuendo of her surname, the better. “You must be…her,” I said, refraining from saying something incredibly rude.
“Indeed, I am,” the nanny said all but pushing past me.
“Please, come in,” I snapped to the empty space left in her wake.
The woman already acted like this was her home, not mine. I was the master of the house, and she needed to recognize that.
As I turned to give her a piece of my mind, my breath caught. The picture on her resume really did not do her justice. Miss Hump had a full heart-shaped rump, a narrow waist, and long, shiny black hair that fell in cascades over her big tits. Curves like that immediately woke something in me that was long dormant. My skin flamed with desire.
Becky caught me staring and raised one perfect, dark eyebrow.
No words came to my clenched throat.
“Where is the little one?” she asked, turning away.
“Asleep in her room. We had a rather heated disagreement over whether she should take a bath. I was firmly on the pro side while she was more in favor of running around the apartment, yelling ‘no!’ Tuckered the little tyke right out.”
“Sounds like quite the ordeal.”
