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Zander moved around me on the stairs and opened the door for us. “I’ve got to say, I was having a better time discussing Ms. Young.”
Gracie continued to scream until I dropped her on the couch in Zander’s office. Then, she curled up and glared at the three of us.
“Look here, Gracie. You can’t keep screaming in the office like that. If you’re upset, you have to use your words. We can’t read your mind.” I sat on the coffee table in front of her and rested my forearms on my legs. “We’re going to find you a new nanny as soon as possible. Someone who will work for the next month. So, they don’t even have to be perfect.”
“I don’t want a new nanny! I want Aggie!” Gracie sat up and crossed her arms over her chest. “I only want Aggie!”
Zander grunted. “Excuse me?”
“I like Aggie! I want her to be my nanny!” With a look of stubbornness on her face that came straight from her mother, Gracie laid out her demands in a way that wasn’t unlike a bank robber. “Aggie can be my nanny and I won’t ever have to stay with Beth again. I don’t like Beth. She’s mean and boring and just tells me to sit still and be quiet.”
The three of us, the adults, stayed silent and looked at each other in concern. She wanted Aggie. The only Aggie I knew was the Aggie we’d just interviewed. Agatha Young, ex-girlfriend of Monroe Blake and latest person to be turned down for a job at TGC. Agatha Young, suspected spy.
Knight sank into the couch next to Gracie after grabbing his laptop from Zander’s desk. He tapped a few buttons and then stared at his screen with a scowl morphing his features. “Gracie approached Ms. Young while she was waiting for us to see her.”
Zander moved around to see the screen and frowned. “What are they doing?”
With another tap of a button, Gracie and Aggie’s conversation could be heard. Aggie was speaking animatedly to Gracie while simultaneously teaching her how to work out a crossword puzzle. “Show me the face once more. The one you’ll make when that punk pulls your hair again.”
Gracie from the past made a funny face and giggled. It’d been so long since I’d heard her giggle that I felt the air leave my lungs.
“Oh, lord, kid. No, not like that. You don’t want this bully to think you have to pee, do you? You want him to be scared of you. You want him to take one look at you and run away crying.” Aggie watched Gracie run through a series of faces and then gasped. “Yes! That one! The next time that kid touches you, you show him that face. And tell him that if he does it again, you know an adult who isn’t against hitting mean little boys. Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m not supposed to hit kids, but I just feel like if more men had been knocked down a peg when they were just mean little boys, I wouldn’t be sitting here as a pawn in three rich dudes’ power play.”
“Fucking hell.” Zander shook his head and sent a sharp look Gracie’s way. “You want that insane woman as your nanny?”
Gracie made the face Aggie had encouraged her to make and narrowed her eyes. “Aggie is nice. I don’t want anyone else.”
“You don’t always get what you want, Gracie.” Zander stood up and paced to his desk and back. “That woman is nuts. She told you she’d hit a child!”
“This is boys’ club bull-crap, Uncle Zander.”
I pressed my fist to my mouth and fought the urge to laugh as our tiny niece railroaded us. We needed a nanny. Desperately. The idea of Aggie Young in our house, spending all her time with our niece, though? It was insane. There was no way it would work. Gracie would be beating up kids in no time under Aggie’s guidance.
“Gracie. You’re the kid. We’re the adults. You don’t get to scream and kick to get your way. We know that you’ve been having a hard—”
As if to prove a point, Gracie started screaming again. There were no tears, just sheer determination and willingness to rip her throat to shreds to get what she wanted.
Knight groaned. “Remember the time Zella didn’t shower for a week straight to prove a point to Mom? She went to prom with greasy hair. This kid has her mother’s ability to wreck us. Let’s just do it.”
I shrugged. “I can’t listen to this screaming.”
Zander knelt in front of Gracie and gave her a hard stare. “This is not how you get things you want from now on, Gracie. If we let you grow into a brat who throws tantrums to get what she wants, we’ll never forgive ourselves. We’ll ask Ms. Young is she’d be interested in the job, but she isn’t a nanny, Gracie. She probably won’t want to work as one.”
Gracie threw her arms around Zander’s neck and screamed, this time in excitement. “Thank you! Aggie is so cool! She taught me how to do a crossword puzzle, Uncle Knight. Even though you said I was too little.”
Knight sighed and muttered under his breath as he walked away. “Fuck me.”
4
***Aggie***
Whenmyphonehadrung just an hour after I had left TGC, I’d figured it would be my dad, asking me how it went. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him the sordid details so I’d been preparing to ignore the call when I’d seen it was Maggie Holcomb, the HR employee who’d been in contact with me about my interview with the Graves brothers. I’d answered, expecting an immediate rejection, or some other cruel move. Instead, I’d been invited to the brothers’ personal lawyer’s office for a job offer.
I had no clue what the hell that meant, but there was no way I was going to miss it. Especially not after I’d made a few calls in the short amount of time since leaving my interview and found out for sure that I’d been blacklisted. I couldn’t afford to ignore any communication from the Graveses. Even if I wanted to shove their job offer up their rude backsides and laugh in their stupidly handsome faces.
I was surprised to find their lawyer’s office on the outskirts of Dallas, in a small residential area. Nestled between two suburbs was a small cluster of beautiful homes that had been turned into offices. The law office of Henry J. Kuller was situated between a dentist office and a pediatrician’s office, both quaint and peaceful in the middle of a busy workday. I could see the allure of the offices after just leaving downtown Dallas, where I’d been honked at a dozen times and nearly run over almost as much.
I parked my aging car behind a giant pickup truck and stepped out just as Kyrin Graves exited the truck. I ran my eyes over the truck and then the man, hoping to find the two at odds. I liked the truck; I didn’t want to find anything alluring about the man. Unfortunately, Kyrin had found the time to change into a pair of blue jeans that looked worn perfectly to his body and a T-shirt that fit the same. Gone was the businessman. Standing in front of me was a man who might’ve fit in just fine at one of the rodeos I’d gone to as a teen.
