AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She wants to set up a science lab. You might want to check Amazon and see what she's ordered from Alexa.”
“Shut up!” Poppy said, looking furious. She charged her sister and shoved her.
“A science lab, huh?” I eyed Poppy. I made a mental note to discuss with Brandon how serious this whole lab situation was. But for now I knew better than to show fear to a child. “As long as you’re not making moonshine, I think we’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t sure what Willow’s motivation for telling me was. Irritation with her sister? Or was she trying to help me out? It was too early to tell. But this wasn’t going to be an easy gig, that was obvious.
“What’s your room like, Willow? What are you into?”
“Nothing,” she said, looking self-conscious of the question.
“Clothes and boys,” Poppy said, making a face. “Stupid stuff.”
“Shut up, Brain. At least I have a life.”
This wasn’t going well. Poppy looked ready to attack her sister again, so I said, “Back to your old room and get more stuff. We can’t keep these movers here all day.”
“Do you mind helping?” I asked Willow when Poppy went running out of the room. “I would appreciate it.”
“I will do it for you, not for her,” she said, with great dignity. Willow was in that awkward preteen stage where her arms and legs seemed too long and she constantly folded her right arm over the left, like she needed to hide her emerging chest.
I wondered how often they talked to their mother and why they didn’t live with her. It would suck to be twelve and going through the shitshow of puberty without a mom to talk to.
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t have a sister, you know. I always wished I did.”
“Were you an only child? That would be awesome.” She walked across the hallway with me.
“No. I have two younger brothers. It was fun growing up with them because there was mostly no drama. Now, if I had been younger than them, it probably would have been different. I suspect they would have beat me up a lot. Instead, I did most of the beating up.” I grinned at one particularly horrible moment on my part where I had shoved my brother outside in December in nothing but a towel after I learned he sent a text from my phone to a guy I liked.
“Yeah, but if you had older brothers, they would bring their cute friends over.” Willow looked moony over the very thought of having a fictitious older brother with fictitious hot friends.
So now I knew what Willow’s deal was. She’d gotten bit by the boyfriend bug. She wanted to enter the world of “hanging out.” I was going to need to investigate what if anything Brandon had discussed with her regarding boys, hanging out, sex, curfews. All of it. Or maybe I wasn’t supposed to interfere when it came to real-world stuff.
Elijah was right. I didn’t know a damn thing about being a nanny.
“That is true,” I told her. “But boys are better when they’re not in a group. They get obnoxious when there are more than two of them together at the same time.” I glanced at the movers, who were lifting Poppy’s dresser for transport. “No offense,” I said.
“I’m not even listening to you,” the thin guy said. “So no offense right back.”
“Excellent. Willow, let’s grab more of Poppy’s clothes while she packs up her desk.”
The project was taking forever. All day. Elijah had left, effectively drunk, at four, right when my stuff finally all got into the nanny room. I stood there, surrounded by boxes, and felt some serious anxiety. The nanny room. I was Fran Drescher. How the hell had that happened?
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I called. Maybe whoever it was could help me figure out where to start with this mess.
It was Brandon. After closing the door behind him, he snaked his way through boxes and furniture. “I know this is overwhelming but we need to talk before I leave.”
“I’m not calling you Mr. Macnamara, so forget it,” I said, feeling salty.
He paused. “How about Coach? Or is that just for sex?”
That made me laugh. “To use Poppy’s favorite phrase, ‘shut up.’ I have never called you Coach during sex and I don’t plan to.”
Brandon grinned. “Does that mean no cheerleader uniform either?”
Now that idea had some appeal. But I wasn’t telling him that. “Says the man who keeps insisting on discretion.”
