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I looked over my shoulder at him. He stood beside the kitchen island in his pajamas, clutching that little toy police car he’d shown up with that first day. It was, hands down, his favorite toy, and he hardly went anywhere without it. His plump cheek was covered in pillow creases, and his dark hair was sticking up on the side of his head. It was still uncanny how much he looked like me.
“No French toast, pal. Cereal.” I pulled out two boxes and held them up, giving each a shake.
If it couldn’t be microwaved or poured directly into a dish, I was having none of it. I didn’t have a clue how to cook, and I honestly had no desire to learn. I knew there were parents who’d rake me over to coals for feeding my kid takeout night after night, but it wasn’t like there weren’t healthy options. I made sure to order a couple vegetables every night. But if he didn’t like them, I wasn’t going to shove them down his throat. He knew what he liked and what he didn’t.
He stared at me in that silent, contemplative way of his for several seconds before tottering over to one of the stools and climbing up. “Wed,” he finally answered, pointing at the red box in my left hand.
“Red it is,” I mumbled and got down to pouring him a bowl of cereal.
He was happily munching away and I was halfway through my first cup of coffee, still feeling more zombie than human, when a knock sounded on my front door.
My stomach plummeted, falling right out of my ass as I jerked my attention toward the door. The last time I’d had an unexpected early morning caller, my world had been thrown into disarray. I wasn’t sure I could handle another surprise. Not when I was still reeling from the first one.
I stood frozen to the spot as another knock came.
“Daddy.” My son’s little voice pulled me from my fear-laced musings. “Who dat?”
“I don’t know, kiddo,” I answered as I plunked the mug down on the counter. “Stay here while I check.”
And so help me God, if it was another woman showing up with a kid I didn’t know about, I was going to lose my shit.
The person on the other side of the door had just started to knock for the third time when I grabbed the knob and yanked it open forcefully.
The woman standing across from me let out a started, “Oh!” and stumbled at the sudden action before pulling herself together and smiling up at me, two deep dimples pressing into her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t sure if you’d heard me—” Her words trailed off when her gaze traveled down far enough to take in my bare chest. Red creeped up her chest and neck, bleeding upward until her whole face practically glowed with it.
I knew I wasn’t exactly decent, but I’d just woken up, for Christ’s sake. Her reaction to me standing there shirtless was downright scandalized. Ridiculous, really. I was wearing sweats, after all. Hell, I went running in less than this.
It took my foggy brain a moment to engage, but after a few seconds, I recalled where I knew this woman from. Sleep deprivation had caused me to forget what had happened the past few days. She was the woman I’d hired to be Cash’s new nanny, only, she looked absolutely nothing like the disheveled mess who’d shown up for the interview.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
There’d been something about her in my office that had tugged at me when she smiled, but she might as well have been hiding away behind those ugly clothes. Now... well, now she wasn’t hiding a damn thing, and who the fuck would haveguessed what lay beneath all that monochromatic shit-colored fabric?
The woman hadcurves, and damn, but they looked fine as hell in the jeans she was wearing. She might have been petite when it came to her height—I would have been shocked if she stood two inches over five feet—but she was built like a woman, that was for damn sure.
Her red hair looked different too. Instead of trying to contain it in an unappealing ponytail, she’d let it hang free, trailing past her shoulders and down her back in loose, wild waves.
If she’d showed up to the interview looking like this, Ineverwould have given her the job. Christ, this was a huge mistake.
“You did something to yourself.” I hadn’t meant the words to come out so harsh and accusing, but I still wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
Her expressive eyes went wide, a million different emotions flitting across them as she tried to settle on a reaction. Finally, she went with, “I, oh... um, what?”
I cleared my throat and tried again, making sure not to sound like a prime-one asshole this time. “You look different. I didn’t recognize you at first.”
Another voice spoke up behind her, causing me to jolt. I’d been so busy staring at the woman in front of me that I hadn’t realized we weren’t alone. “Isn’t she pretty as a picture?”
She sure the hell was.
That was the problem.
Because I hadn’t wanted to fuck the girl I’d hired as my son’s new nanny. But this woman, well, she’d barely said a handful of words, simply stood on my doorstep looking like a deer in headlights, and still, that was enough to make my dick twitch.
Fuck my fucking life.
“You gonna just stand there, showin’ you’ve got the manners of a barnyard animal, or you gonna let us in?” Myra Montgomery asked, snapping me out of my miserable thoughts.
