I silently cursed as I felt my cheeks burn. I looked like the idiot nanny who had a crush on her boss. Calling him Griff had shown too much of my hand. A woman like Stacy missed nothing.
“Mom, do you want to play on the swings?” Caroline loved to swing. She especially loved being pushed and pushed for hours if someone would comply.
Stacy frowned down at her daughter and dismissed her with a flick of her wrist and a scowl. “Take your brother and you both go play.”
“But, Mom...”
“Caroline, I don’t care.” Stacy tilted her chin even higher and looked away from her kids. “Mommy just got some terrible news about Daddy and she needs to be alone with your nanny to talk about it. Your nanny seems to know a lot about your daddy, right?”
Both kids seemed to sense her mood and walked away. Dave looked between the two of us women and backed away. Coward.
I braced myself for whatever Stacy was going to say, but she made me wait. She pulled out her purse and touched up her lipstick before looking me over and laughing.
“So, you’re fucking my ex-husband. That didn’t take long.” She shook her head. “What’d you do? The last nanny waited for him with her legs spread on our bed. The one before that met him in the laundry room, on her knees. You look like the type who’d offer her mouth first. The type who knows where her worth is. I can’t imagine there’s much left south of those lips.”
I hadn’t been ready. Nothing could prepare a woman for those kinds of cutting insults. God, Stacy was a monster, but she knew how to cut.
“You’re still blushing when you think of him. That’s cute. You’re probably having visions in your head of, like, becoming the kids’ new mommy and marrying Griffin. You’re probably thinking that since he fucked you, he must care about you. Newsflash, slut: you’re not the first nanny, and you won’t be the last. It’s cute, actually, that you’d think you’re special. With your big eyes and your perfect dick-sucking lips, you were probablythe picture of innocence forGriffto pretend like you weren’t just like all the other whores who throw themselves at him.”
She leaned in. “It’ll hurt when he sees that you’re just the typical trash that washes up on the beach each summer. You, I mean. He won’t give a shit. He’ll come back to me and bury that thick cock in the only pussy that’s ever been able to keep his attention for more than a few months.”
I was reeling on the inside, but I knew better than to show Stacy any of it. I’d survived my first year of teaching by pretending like nothing hurt me. If I could survive five-year-olds asking why my butt was bigger than their mom’s all year long, I could survive Stacy Laray. Probably.
I smiled and pushed away from the table. “I’m going to go play with the kids. Unless you’d like to.”
She didn’t say anything, so I assumed she wouldn’t be joining Jones and Caroline on the slides. I walked over to them, feeling stiff and robotic. It wasn’t easy not to react to Stacy. I wanted to drag her across the table and pull her hair out of her head, one strand at a time. Instead, I kept it professional and went down the slide with Caroline like a good nanny.
I was plotting and planning in my head, though. My blood was boiling, and I was rigid with the tension of knowing I was going to go back to the beach house and wring the neck of Griff. Griffin. That motherfucker. Zeke and Con, too. They could all go take a long walk off a short plank, for all I cared. As long as I got my chance to rip them to pieces first.
They’d let me put myself in the position of slutty nanny, and I’d lived right up to all the standards, apparently. Or maybe I’d exceeded them. After all, I’d slept withallthe brothers.
I knew I only had myself to blame, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Only annihilating the Phoenix men would help.
Chapter 21
***Autumn***
I waited patiently to strike. Zeke had the misfortune of arriving back at the house that night, coming in for dinner with a big, stupid grin on his face. Con and Griff had sensed my mood pretty early on, it seemed. They had both been watching me with concerned looks on their faces. They had no clue what was coming for them. I’d stewed. I’d cleaned up a dog poop accident. I’d smiled when asked how my day had been. I’d tucked the children into bed and read bedtime stories because I was a good nanny and because I could multi-task reading and envisioning killing their fathers.
I went downstairs as quietly as possible and found them all sitting in Griff’s office, talking over their nightcaps. I slipped into the room and shut the door behind me, catching their attention. Then, I just stood there, glaring at them, trying to decide which one I wanted to verbally stab first.
Zeke stood up and moved closer to me. “Hey, Autumn. What’s wrong?”
I all but hissed at him. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, you giant asshole. I spent the day with Stacy Laray, listening to her tell me what aslutI am for fucking her ex-husband.”
Griff growled and stood up. “Fucking—”
“Oh, I’m hardly finished. You just sit back down and get ready to listen to me, you even bigger asshole.” I stomped towards them and jabbed my finger towards all of them. “I got to listen to what a fucking cliché I was. I heard all about the other nannies before me. The bedroom nanny and the laundry room nanny and who knows what other nannies you had around here.I had to sit there and be a fucking professional while that-thatwomanpointed out what a goddamn joke I am!”
Con sat forward and shook his head. “Auti, we—”
“You shut the hell up, too!” I kept moving towards Griff. “Your lovely ex-wife told me all kinds of stuff while simultaneously ignoring your children. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of just how easily I fell into the role of the slutty fucking nanny. You have no idea how angry I am. I daydreamed about using your dicks as bowling pins today.
“And I know it’s my fault! I’m the jerk who suddenly decided to live out her best ho life, but still! I hate all of you.” I sucked in a huge gulp of air and leaned over Griff’s desk to poke him in the chest, hard. “And you. You are a giant wad of dicks. Do you hear me? Just a big, huge cluster of nasty dicks. With balls!”
Griff surprised me by reaching over and grabbing me. He easily dragged me over the desk and into his lap, wrapping his arms around me like steel bars that I couldn’t even budge against. “Stop yelling, woman. Just shut up and let us reply, would you?”
I fought against his hold and even tried to bite him, but he just shook me and pressed his traitor lips against my ear.
