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Iloved arriving at a place early, but I had perhaps over done it this time.
I parked my car in front of the three-story, gorgeous, brown brick house thirty minutes before I was scheduled to meet Mr. Becker. On the plus side, the extra time I had to sit in my car and go over what I was going to say did help to calm my nerves.
A little.
“Remember to mention the fact that you’re CPR certified,” I said to myself. “And that you took four years of Spanish in college so you can help the kid learn the basics if he’s interested. What else… what else…” I tapped my chin, sitting in the driver’s seat of my 15-year-old Honda Accord, the California sun streaming through the window and warming the left side of my body.
I heard the sound of a garage door opening and saw a shiny new car turning into the driveway right in front of me. I couldn’t tell if the driver looked my way or not because the car windows were tinted.
Damnit.
I had been hoping to get a good look at this Becker brother before meeting him face-to-face. Lily had reminded me earlier that morning when I talked to her on the phone that all the Becker brothers had attended a wedding in Hawaii together at the same time that we were there with the rest of our friends. That was where she first met her now-fiancé David, and where I saw the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my life. But there was no way that man and my new employer could be one and the same. The odds were stacked heavily against that being the case, and really, that was a good thing. That man had infected my thoughts, and my dreams, for months after we left Hawaii and it would be a nightmare if I suddenly found myself working underneath him.
I hadn’t moved to San Francisco, away from my hometown and from everything I’d ever known, for a fling! I moved here for a job, a very well-paid job with benefits and free room and board. The last thing I wanted to do was let my feelings for a stranger get in the way of this great new opportunity for me, so as I got out of the car and slowly walked up towards the house, I said a silent prayer to myself.
Please don’t be him… please don’t be him.
I reached out and knocked, then took a step back, folded my arms in front of my waist, and waited.
The door opened before me about twenty seconds later, and there he stood. He was wearing casual clothes, similar to what I saw him wearing when I spotted him standing in the hallway at the resort in Hawaii. Staring at him head-on, I found myself not only shocked that it was the same man, but absolutely floored by how much better he looked in natural lighting. The sunlight bounced off his strong jaw and lit up his hazel eyes in a way that made them look like two peaceful ponds of greenish brown water.
“Hello,” he said and his voice was smooth and confident. “You must be Stephanie. I’m—”
“Mr. Becker,” I finished the sentence for him.
He laughed. “You can call me Matt. In fact, I insist that you call me Matt. Mr. Becker just makes me think of my father.”
I looked down at my feet. This was so embarrassing. The last time I had seen this man’s face, it had been a couple weeks ago, when he showed up in one of my dreams wearing no shirt and his hair dripping wet for reasons I never was able to figure out.
“It’s nice to meet you,Matt.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too.” He stepped aside. “Come on in and I can give you the tour and we can talk more about your past experience.” I went inside and he closed the door behind us. “Not that you don’t already have the job. I mean, we still have to wait on the background check, but I’m assuming that won’t come back with any red flags. You’re not a kleptomaniac are you?”
I snapped my head up to meet his gaze. “No,” I said. “Of course not. Why? Did Lily say something? Because sometimes she can have this dry sense of humor that—”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “Sorry, it was a joke. My brother mentioned something today about this big crime ring that was using the cover of a nanny service. Anyway.” He waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Forget about it. It’s not important. Let’s move on with the tour, shall we?”
He walked me out of the dimly lit entryway and into the bright and sunny living room, and it was in that moment that I understood just how much money the Becker family had. Lily had been a little cagey about the details when I asked her what sort of familial situation I was walking into, but now it was all clicking. They wereseriously loaded.
Matt motioned to the room in front of us. “This is the living room.”
I saw designer furniture upholstered in perfectly unstained white fabric, a fireplace with a polished hard-wood mantle, upon which stood ornate vases that I guessed had to be worth more than my entire undergraduate education. There were oil paintings on every wall—landscapes, and portraits, all of them stunning and framed in beautifully carved wood.
Then Matt turned to face me and his expression shifted a little. There was something in his eyes. It almost looked as if he was seeing me for the first time or something, like he was finallyrecognizingme. But that was impossible, because he hadn’t seen me that night in Hawaii… At least, I hadn’t thought he did.
“Do I—Have we met before?” he asked.
What was I supposed to say? No, we haven’t officially met but I did see you one time in Hawaii and I have been lusting over you ever since?
That was not an option.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve lived in Riverside my entire life so unless you get down to that part of California a lot, I’m not sure where we would’ve run into each other.”
He shook his head. “I can’t say that I get down to Riverside all that often, no.” He stared at me for a moment or two longer, clearly trying to place me, and then his eyes went wide. “Wait a second, were you in Hawaii with your friend Lily last year? David told me that Lily’s trip out there with her friends actually overlapped with the time when all the Becker brothers went down to the island for a wedding.”
I felt my face getting hot. Maybe he had seen me. But when? I’d replayed that scene in my head, the one of him walking past the elevator before the doors closed and I rode up to my floor, manymanytimes over the last year, and I knew for a fact that he didn’t look my way.
“You were in Hawaii, weren’t you,” he said, snapping his fingers at me and nodding his head, obviously very happy having figured out where he knew me from. “Man, small world.” Then I watched as his expression shifted yet again, only this time it was much harder for me to read what was going on underneath the surface. His smile melted into a frown and his eyebrows began to sink heavy over his eyes with something akin to concern. “And now you’re here to be Will’s new nanny.”
