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“Sit down, Miss Young.” The demand from Zander, and it was very clearly a demand, sent azingof energy up my spine and left me breathless. His whiskey-colored eyes burned through me as I lowered my body back to the couch, much to my surprise. “The job will last one month. You’ll stay at our home so you can be with Gracie full-time. You’ll have Sundays off. We’ll pay you your yearly salary from Blake’s, like I stated earlier. You’ll spend your time with Gracie, taking care of her in whatever ways she needs. You’ll mind your business and sign an NDA that would sink the rest of your life down the toilet if you ever shared a single thing about our lives with anyone outside of our family. Am I clear?”
Kyrin cleared his throat. “Zan…”
“Miss Young? Am I clear?” Zander stood and moved to stand next to me. He towered over me and I had to tip my head back to look up at him, a move he seemed to like, judging by the slight lift of one side of his mouth. “It’s this, or nothing.”
My body was in a state of chaos unlike anything I’d ever felt. I’d never been spoken to as directly as he was speaking to me, with the look of intensity in his eyes what it was. I could feel my panties grow damp and goosebumps raise all over my arms and legs. I had to fight to hold down a shiver as I held his gaze. I had the distinct feeling that I was supposed to look down and nod my agreement to him, but I wasn’t so far out of control that I wasn’t myself.
My mind raced as I tried to make sense of what was happening. I was being offered a job, albeit one that I didn’t want, wasn’t qualified for, and was insulted to be offered. I had to leverage my position. I had to make the most of it. They needed me. “If I agree to do it, you’ll give me a chance doing the work I’m meant to do.”
Knight laughed. “Oh?”
I lowered my gaze to him and nodded once. “If you want a happy niece, you’ll agree to let me show you my work. You’ll give me a chance. Test me, hook me up to a lie-detector, I don’t care. I won’t take this job unless you put it in the contract that I’ll be allowed to complete a week of work for TGC.”
Zander hooked his thumb under my chin and lifted my face to his once more. The roughness of his thumb was surprising; it wasn’t the touch of a man who spent all of his time in an office. If the man felt like he was crossing boundaries in any way by touching me, he didn’t show it. He searched my face and narrowed his gaze. “One chance.”
“Five days.” I licked my lips, as close to begging as I would ever be for them. I needed a chance to show them I was the right person for the job. The real job, not the nanny job. “Give me five days.”
“Miss Young, you don’t seem to understand who holds the power here.” Zander’s gaze had zeroed in on my mouth and he didn’t bother shifting his gaze away to be polite. “We’ll give you three opportunities. Not one more. If you take the job, you move in tonight. You start tomorrow morning and you’ll be the best goddamn nanny our niece could ever hope for. Understood?”
With my heart in my throat, feeling distinctly like I was signing a deal with the devil, I swallowed down my fear and nodded. “Understood. I’ll do it.”
Kyrin grunted from beside me. “This should be completely problem-free. I can’t see why anything would possibly go wrong with this plan.”
I wanted to glare at him, but the older brother had captured my gaze again and I felt like turning my face away from him would be the equivalent of turning my back to a lion. “I don’t see why there would be any problems. I’ll be the bestgoddamnnanny Gracie could ever want and you three will give me the chance you should’ve given me earlier to prove my worth.”
Knight sighed. “None of the other nannies talked back.”
Chancing my throat being ripped out, I lowered a glare at Knight. “I’m not a nanny. I’m a digital strategist and a damn good one. There’s not a problem you could shove at me that I couldn’t tackle in less time that it takes you to put on your pompous attitude each morning. I talk back, especially when what I hear is garbage.”
Knight’s lips twisted into a dark smile as he sat forward and rested his chin on his hand. “You’re wrong, Aggie. I wake up like this. This pompous attitude is all natural.”
“Good for you.” I leaned away from Zander and crossed my arms. “Well? Let’s get a move on.”
We had to move fast before the irony of my situation smothered me to death. I'd been dumped and fired for refusing to push out a baby for Monroe. Yet, there I was, taking a job caring for a child. It was hard as hell to hold on to my dignity when it was a quickly deflating balloon spiraling around the room.
5
***Aggie***
“No,Dad,don’tbesilly. These men already dislike me. I can’t imagine what having my dad show up to fight my battles would make them think of me.” I shuddered at the very thought. “It’ll be okay. I promise. This is just for a month. Once they see my work, they’ll see that I’m worth the chance.”
“I don’t want to fight your battles. I want to fight the men in your life who hurt you.” Mark Young, self-proclaimed hippie and father-of-the-year, suddenly shouted into the line. “Brenda! Brenda, no! Get your ass away from that fence and stop messing with me!”
“You and Brenda still haven’t made up?”
“You know I don’t like to use this word, Ag, but Brenda is a flagrant bitch!” He swore and then sighed in defeat. “If I ever see the man who sold me this cow, I’ll make him wish I’d given up my gun when I left the NRA.”
“Good Lord, Dad. Play nice with Brenda. She’s the only woman besides me who will put up with you.” I pulled off to the side of the country road I was on and looked at my phone to see the map once more. “I’m trying to find this house, but I’ve never been out here before. It’s like a never-ending stretch of two-lane highway.”
“You’d think rich people like them would be able to afford a house closer to town, huh?”
I pulled back on the highway and kept driving in the same direction. “Or at least a few signs. What would it hurt to give a woman some clues?”
“If you get there and it’s not a safe environment, you’re going to leave, right? Please tell me that I raised you right and that you’ll take note of any creepiness and let it guide you the hell out of there.” Dad grunted and swore. “This damn cow is going to be a steak on my dinner plate if she doesn’t get with the program.”
I didn’t bother reminding him that he was a vegetarian. I drove up a hill that made my stomach ache and once I crested the top, I saw the start of a beautiful white fence. “I think I found the start of the yellow brick road.”
“You can still turn around and come live with your old man, Ag. I always have a place for you. These men sound like a bunch of jackasses. It’s never too late to leave them high and dry.”
