The Nanny Proposal

With Aaron, she didn’t feel like the discarded wife, the foolish, naïve friend. In his arms, she remembered the confident woman she used to be. She felt desired and alive.

And they hadn’t even got to the really good, rolling around naked, part yet.

Aaron put a little space between them. His expression turned contemplative, his eyes speculative. “What are you suggesting, Kasey?”

God, was he expecting her to draw him a picture? Suddenly feeling shy and out of her depth, Kasey placed her hands against his chest and tried to push him away, but he didn’t move an inch.

“No, don’t run away,” Aaron said, his deep, husky voice soothing her agitation. “I just want us to be clear on what we are doing here. I want you to work for me, Kasey, and I don’t want to lose you as an executive assistant because we want to scratch an itch.”

She wanted to take the job. She did. The enormous salary would allow her to rent that fairy-tale cottage she’d fallen in love with in downtown Royal and would pay for her shoe and book habit. She wouldn’t need to dip into her savings or the divorce settlement Dale agreed to pay for being a cheating douchebag dick. This job sounded interesting and challenging. But she really, really wanted to see what was under Aaron’s perfectly tailored suit and blindingly white shirt.

“That’s a sensible argument...” Kasey said, trailing off. Then she lifted her eyes to look into his. Be brave, Kasey, take a chance. Start off the new year with a bang. Metaphorically. And, maybe if the gods of good sex liked her, literally. “But on nights like these we aren’t supposed to be sensible.”

You’re making a mistake—remember you can’t trust your own judgment. You’ve made so many mistakes trusting men and people before.

Shut up, boring brain.

“One night, Kasey. A few hours to burn whatever we are feeling for each other out of our systems.” Aaron’s words echoed her thoughts. “I’m leaving for a skiing trip tomorrow and will only be back in Royal on the seventh. You can think about taking the job. If you do, this won’t happen again. Ever. We’ll be boss and employee.”

Boss and employee. Kasey leaned back, knowing he’d hold her as she forced herself to think. Difficult to do when she was so desperate to say “to hell with it” and feel.

But she was an adult and she had to walk into this situation, his arms and his bed, with her eyes wide open and her head on straight.

A week’s break would give them some time to clear their heads, to practice their “I’ve forgotten what you look like naked” attitude. They were adults, they could do this.

Kasey nibbled the inside of her cheek. She wanted to burn the memories of Dale away, to finally exorcise him from her life, and she wanted to do that with Aaron. He was fantastically good-looking, successful and smart. But, more than that, she instinctively liked him.

Consider him as a welcome-to-your-new-life gift to yourself, Monroe.

“You’re killing me here, Kasey,” Aaron muttered.

Kasey draped her arms over his shoulders as she eased closer to him. “One night, no expectations, and when we meet again, we’ll be all business?”

Aaron nodded. “That’s the way I’m looking at this.”

Kasey smiled. “One question?”

Aaron closed his eyes, exaggerating his anguish. “Did I mention that you are killing me here?”

Kasey’s laugh mingled with the music. “Your place or mine?”

One (#u914c1d69-1243-55a8-a1e3-5981b24b606a)

Eight months later...

Aaron Phillips pulled up to the curb outside Kasey’s rental home and cut the engine to his luxury, German-engineered SUV. The car was fine but he missed driving his Vanquish with its bucket seats and a million horses under the hood. But he was, as of yesterday, Savannah’s guardian and that meant a solid, dependable, safe vehicle with a booster seat and top safety ratings.

God, what had Jason been drinking when he’d named him as Savannah’s guardian and not their younger sister, Megan? What did he know about raising a little girl? Zero. And that was why he was parked outside the house of the woman he’d tried, as much as possible, to avoid for most of this year.

They talked often during the day, their Skype connection was pretty much always open and emails constantly bounced between them. But despite living in the same town, he hadn’t laid eyes on her more than six times over the last eight months. Every one of those meetings had been an exercise in curtailing his impulse to scoop her up and carry her off to his bed.

That night, God, it was still burned into his brain. His memories of her were so strong that he could almost feel her endlessly, addictively soft and fragrant skin, hear the small murmurs of appreciation she made, taste the spicy sweetness of her mouth. As for those pretty, feminine places she hid from the world, they’d rocked his world.

She’d been so tight, warm...ridiculously responsive.

Aaron banged his forehead on the steering wheel, trying to push the image of Kasey, naked and wanton, whimpering with desire and begging for him to push her over the edge, from his brain.

How bizarre it was that the hottest sexual experience of his life had been with his executive assistant at the start of the year. His best and last sexual experience...

Eight. Months. God, he really needed to get laid.

But finding a date and some bedroom action was the last thing on his mind.

Aaron glared at Kasey’s pretty cottage, with its pitched roof, pale green cladding and bright pink front door. The house stood in the shade of two live oaks and was enclosed by a whimsical wrought iron fence. He didn’t want to do this, Aaron thought. He didn’t want to walk up that path and pound on her door. He didn’t want his brother, Jason, to be missing, presumed kidnapped, possibly dead.

From the moment he first held his hours-old niece he’d been wrapped around her now over developed baby finger. But he was the fun uncle, the rule breaker in contrast to Jason being the rule enforcer. He was the stay up late and eat sweets before bedtime guy, Jason was her brush your teeth, chase away the monsters and eat your vegetables dad. Now he had to assume—please God, only temporarily—the responsibility of this precious little person and he felt utterly out of his depth. And soul deep scared.

What the hell did he know about raising a girl? Precisely nothing.

Damn, he wanted life to roll back eight months, to be the man he was before that New Year’s Eve ball when life was relatively simple and not the complicated crap storm it was at the moment.

Whining and wishing isn’t going to get this done, Phillips. Neither is it going to change a damn thing. And you’ve survived life’s crappy upheavals before...

Slamming the heavy car door, his long legs ate up the distance between his vehicle and Kasey’s front door. At the entrance he hesitated, his fist hovering as he was slapped, again, by the images of his assistant, naked and sprawled across his bed, her amber eyes foggy with desire.

With her reddish-brown hair spread across his pillow, and her slim legs trembling with need—for him—she’d looked at him like he was the fulfillment of every fantasy she’d ever had. Then she’d whimpered and moaned, screamed his name, completely caught up in the throes of pleasure. They’d spent most of the night together and Kasey had been a full-fledged participant who gave as good as she got.

When he woke the next day, the start of a new year, she was gone, leaving nothing behind but her lingering scent in the air. Ten days later she’d walked back into his life as his executive assistant and neither of them ever made the smallest reference to that wonderful, crazy, sensation-soaked evening.

Didn’t mean he didn’t think about it. Often.

Aaron rested his forehead on the ridiculously pink door. He couldn’t think about that night now, shouldn’t be thinking about it all. He had a favor to ask of Kasey, and remembering her lusciously scented, velvety-soft skin and made-for-sin mouth was not helping matters.

Aaron ordered his junk to stand down, quickly adjusted himself and gave himself ten seconds to regain control. When he thought he was winning that battle, he rapped his fist against the door.

A minute passed and then another. Aaron glanced at his high-tech watch, his gift to himself for his thirty-third birthday, and frowned. It was after 9:00 a.m. Kasey should be up. His Saturday morning had already been jam-packed: he’d met with his lawyer, gathered the documentation to prove he was Savannah’s legal guardian and filled Megan in on the big news.

It had been a brutal morning but, hell, that wasn’t anything new. The past few months had been more of the same. It had started with the note Jason sent to Megan—accompanied by the urn containing Will’s ashes—saying that he’d been with Will during the airplane crash and he needed time to grieve Will’s death before returning home, something neither of them understood. Jason would never put his friend’s death between him and his daughter, no matter how gutted he might be. Then Jason had stayed away, supposedly on business trips, and had failed time and time again to FaceTime with Savannah. As his frequent, albeit odd, emails had trickled to a stop, Aaron’s and Megan’s concern had mushroomed into genuine fear that something was horribly wrong.

Since Jason’s disappearance—it had been too long to call it anything else—Savannah had been splitting her time between Aaron’s and Megan’s places. But they both agreed, with school starting soon, that Savannah needed permanence in her life. Megan was going through her own special type of hell—the man she’d married, and buried, was not actually the person she had thought he was. So until Jason came back, Savvie’s place was with Aaron. If Jason came back...

His brother had to come back. He loved and adored his niece but Aaron wasn’t ready to be a father to an almost-six-year-old girl who’d experienced more upheaval than any child should.

Jay, where the hell are you?

The front door opened and Aaron looked down into Kasey’s heart-shaped, makeup-free face and, for an instant, he forgot how to breathe. She was dressed in a tank top, through which he could see the faint outline of her nipples, and the smallest pair of sleep shorts that skimmed the top of her thighs. His gaze drifted back up, drinking in those high cheekbones, that array of messy hair just grazing her shoulders, and those stunningly beautiful whiskey eyes groggy with sleep.

God, he wanted her. Still. Eight months of working with her hadn’t cured him of that little affliction. He hadn’t been so attracted to—obsessed with—a woman since Kate. And look how well that had turned out. His infatuation with Kate had had enormous consequences and was, in a roundabout way, responsible for his parents’ death. His lack of a college degree, inability to trust and his emotional unavailability could also be traced back to that woman.