Page 8 of Knot The Nanny We Planned

I think of Willow in the hallway, her eyes wide, her voice shaking but steady. ‘I'm not leaving’. I think of the way she looked at Deklan when he said Lily's name, soft, aching, and full of compassion that couldn't be faked. I think of the way her scent shifted when she talked about the child, not less aroused, but deeper, richer, and layered with something that smelled like home.

"It will be," I say.

Deklan stares at me for a long moment. Then he shakes his head, the ghost of a bitter smile on his lips. "You've never been an optimist, JD."

"I've never had a reason to be."

He turns and walks out of the kitchen, his footsteps silent on the hardwood. I hear him pause in the hallway, outside Willow's door, I think, before continuing to his own room.

I stand alone in the dark kitchen, my water bottle forgotten, my knot still aching, and stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the city lights below.

Somewhere in this penthouse, an omega I just met is sleeping, or not sleeping, in a room that smells like my brother. Somewhere, a two-year-old girl is dreaming without her mother. And somewhere in my chest, in the place where I've kept everything locked away for thirty-four years, something is shifting. Something is opening.

Something that feels terrifyingly like hope.

I press my hand against the cold glass and close my eyes. Don't let this be another promise that breaks, I think. Don't let this be another thing that falls apart.

But her scent is still in the air, honey and vanilla, sweet and impossible, and despite everything, despite the grief and the fear and the years of learning that nothing good ever stays, I feel my mouth curve into the faintest shadow of a smile.

She stayed.

She didn't get back in the elevator.

And tomorrow, I'll find a way to make her glad she didn't.

Chapter three

Willow

I can't sleep.

Every nerve in my body is a live wire. The sheets are too rough, the pillow too flat, the darkness too thick. And the scent, cedar and rain, woven into the fabric of these sheets like it was ironed in, won't let me breathe.

Deklan prepared this room. I don't know how I know that, but I do. The bed is made with military precision, corners tucked tight enough to bounce a quarter. A small vase of wildflowers sits on the nightstand, wildflowers, not roses, not something a designer would choose. Something personal. Something that says I noticed you'd like these even though he never met me before today.

The beta with the broken nose and the grumpy scowl picked wildflowers for my room.

And now his scent is in these sheets, and I'm lying here, thighs pressed together so tight they're shaking, trying to remember every reason I have to be a professional, responsible, dignified adult.

Reason one: this is a job.

Reason two: they're my employers.

Reason three: I am not the kind of omega who crawls into bed with men she just met, no matter what my biology screams.

Reason four…

A sound cuts through the wall. Low, guttural, and almost animal.

I go completely still, my breath frozen in my chest.

It's JD. In the room next door. And that sound, that deep, rumbling growl that vibrates through the drywall and settles in my bones, is not a sound a man makes when he's sleeping.

No. That's a sound a man makes when he's in pain. Or pleasure. Or both.

I hear the shower turn on. The pipes groan in the walls, and I squeeze my eyes shut, because my brain, that traitorous, heat-soaked brain, immediately supplies the image. JD Blaine, six feet four inches of solid Alpha muscle, standing under running water. Naked. Water streaming down the planes of his chest, over the ridges of his abdomen, following the trail of dark hair below his navel to where his,

Stop!