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I hoped he would be proud of that as well.
Chapter Six
Sloan
We would have preferred to meet her together. All three of us. But with a three-year-old who might shift at any moment, that wasn’t a possibility. So we flipped a coin, and I won. Or lost. It kind of depended on how things went at the airport.
It was all happening so fast. Shockingly so. Her ability to leave home at a moment’s notice should have been a red flag, but somehow it had not been. I couldn’t even say why. Sure, we had paid for a background check, and she came back clear, and everything we read about her on the app looked good, but neither of us had expected her to be able to pick up and leave her life on the same day.
Justice was home not only taking care of our cub but trying to straighten up the mess two full-time working males and a mischievous Koby had made of our home. It had never looked like this before our mate passed away, but we’d totally lost control somewhere along the line. We hadn’t really noticed, far more concerned about everything else in our lives, but when I started for the door and tripped over a tangled pile of toddler toys and blankets, we both gasped. And before I made it two steps farther, Koby wandered out wearing more pudding than clothes.
I froze, but Justice gave me a shove toward the door. “Go. I’ve got this. And because we aren’t looking to hire Livvy to be our servant, we probably should consider a real housekeeper.”
“If we can find one who doesn’t freak out at a boy becoming a panda regularly. Think the app has a help wanted section?”
We laughed, but we were definitely facing a series of new challenges, and as I stood in the baggage area, waiting for our nanny and mate in name only, I hoped Justice could handle the cleaning up and Koby wrangling in time. Livvy’s flight showed on time on the big board above the carousel. She would have enough to deal with even starting with a somewhat neat house. Really, a housekeeper wasn’t what we wanted, but we would have to be sure and find some time to help around the house.
Our mate had things so in hand, we’d never even given it a thought. Neat house, good meals, and a relationship that seemed to flow along without any real effort on anyone’s part. We never clashed with her, or almost never. I couldn’t even remember a real argument.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
I glanced up to see the flight info showed arrived rather than on time, and the carousel began to move, her flight number flashing above the belt. At that moment, I heard the chatter of passengers coming down the hallway. It wasn’t a big airport, not international or anything, and there was only one terminal in the small city, but we’d managed to get nonstop for our female. I hated having layovers and didn’t want them for the female coming to share our home. The female who would be coming into sight at any moment. I shouldn’t be as nervous as I was. After all, it was set up as a no-pressure situation. Nanny or more as it suited us, and really, we hadn’t told her we expected more than someone to make our house a home.
Gods, that sounded like a lot more when I thought of it that way. No pressure? Much pressure! But I—I needed to chill out and greet Livvy without terrifying her by wearing a grimace of concentration.
I studied the arriving crowd, searching for her auburn hair, but saw nothing. The main body of the passengers was already through the doorway and gathered where the bags were beginning to ride by. When I looked again, there were no more people entering the area. Had she missed the plane? Changed her mind? I should have asked her to text when she landed. What if she’d gotten sick or there was some other problem that kept her from boarding at the other end. Wouldn’t she have called?
Maybe not.
We didn’t know one another well yet, or at all…perhaps she’d not have thought it necessary to say anything to relative strangers, but—
“Sloan?” The soft voice went all the way to my core, awakening something deep and new and sending my panda tumbling into awareness. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
I turned to find her standing next to me, petite and curvy and shorter than I’d expected. Which must be how I didn’t see her in the crowd. “Livvy.” Oh man, she’d never be just a nanny. Justice was going to feel just the same. “Can you point out your bags?”
“I have two,” she said, “Plus the carry-on.” Stepping over to the moving belt, she pointed. “The dark-blue one and the black with the green ribbon on the handle.” I reached in and caught each as they sailed past.
“We’ll need to arrange for the rest of your things to be shipped,” I said, tucking one case under my arm and grasping the other by the handle. “Will you need a truck or just a crew with boxes?”
“No,” she murmured, eyes downcast. “This is all that I am bringing to your home.”
I felt a pang, deep inside. She had so little, and we had so much to share with her. But I couldn’t throw that right at her, even though my panda wanted to show her everything. To tell her it was hers.
To bestow all he had on his mate.
“Is something wrong?” She laid a hand on my arm, soft, gentle, and soul touching. “I think we have everything.”
“What? No, it’s all good.” I gave her a smile that I hoped did not show just how deeply I was affected. Because she looked merely puzzled. “Ready to go home?”
She let out a sigh. “Home. That sounds good. Maybe you can tell me all about Koby on the way?”
Exactly what she should be asking about. Koby.
Chapter Seven
Livvy
Sloan was picking me up from the airport. I ended up having two big suitcases and one carry-on, but the airline said that Sloan had paid for three bags. They would refund him the extra. My stomach dropped once the plane took off. I broke out in a sweat realizing my haste, my desperation—my flagrant disregard of logic and sensical notions.
