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When he had his swimming lessons, I checked in with au pairs to make sure they were happy, and whatever I didn’t have a chance to do during the day, I caught up at night. Sure, I went to bed a lot later, and I was tired more and more, but I had a job that paid well, and I was getting extra money as an au pair, too.
That, and Hannah hadn’t realized how I’d screwed up. Aaron didn’t know that I should have sent someone else or that I wasn’t an au pair. No one knew any better, and I was in the clear.
I just had to keep things this way.
It was getting harder and harder because Aaron was a difficult man.
“He’s grumpy as hell half of the time,” I complained to Olivia one night when we sat together at a bar in town. She had the night off for a change, and I needed to get out and let my hair down. I had some emails to take care of, but all I did lately was eat, work, and sleep. I would take care of those in the morning. “Sometimes, I think he’s going to fire me and be done with it, but then he doesn’t. He’s so cold with me. It’s like he can’t stand me in his house.”
“I thought he was so dreamy,” Olivia said, sipping on a Cosmopolitan. I sipped my Vodka Tonic.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “He’sgorgeous. Sometimes, when we’re together, and he’s talking to me, everything gets electric, and I get so hot and bothered. I think something might happen––”
“You think something might happen?” Olivia asked, interrupting me.
“––but then,” I added pointedly. “He turns away, and the next day he’ll be such a grump with me, making me wonder if I imagined the whole thing.”
“Maybe youareimagining the whole thing,” Olivia pointed out.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not. It’s really sosparkysometimes.”
Olivia giggled. “Did you just call sexual chemistry ‘sparky’?”
“Well, yeah,” I said and blushed. I nudged her. “You know what I mean.”
“I think you’re stuck in a fantasy where the guy sleeps with the nanny. You know stuff like that doesn’t happen in real life, right?”
I sighed and fiddled with my straw. “Yeah, I know. It’s not like I want anything to happen, anyway.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I had dreams about him more often now. I’d dreamed at least twice that we’d slept together and another time that we did a whole lot that wasn’t sex. What was up with that?
It had to be the sexual tension between us. Sometimes, it was so strong that I could barely breathe. And other times, I was pretty sure he hated me; he was so irritated with me.
“The month is up now,” I said. “Today is the last day, and he hasn’t told me he wants to get rid of me, so I guess that’s something.”
“It is!” Olivia said and held her glass up in the air. “To you making your probation. Sort of.”
I giggled and took my glass to clink it against hers, but I fumbled it, and the glass fell over, pouring the contents out over the bar.
“Shit,” I muttered as the alcohol ran down both sides, splashing onto my jeans before I could jerk away in time.
“Here,” Olivia said, grabbing a wad of napkins from her other side and handing it to me. I mopped up the bar before pressing one of the napkins into my pants. It wasn’t nearly enough.
“You’re going to need another one of those,” Olivia said, and raised her hand to catch the bartender’s attention. She ordered another drink for me while I tried to dissolve the chaos.
“I think it’s a bad sign,” I said. “Knocking over my drink when we’re saluting this job…” I shook my head. “Maybe I shouldn’t wait for him to fire me. Maybe I should quit.”
“What?”
“I know. I love Ben, and it will suck to leave him behind, but I’m not an au pair. This whole thing is a façade, and I’m lying to Hannah. Maybe I should tell Aaron it’s not working out and find him someone else through the agency. That way, I can go back to my job––”
“Which you hate.”
“––and stop juggling and wondering what’s going on with Aaron.”
“And then?” Olivia asked. She finished her cocktail and told the bartender to fill her up, too, while he was at it.
“What do you mean, and then?” I asked
