The Nanny Proposal

He was right. It was essential that they didn’t make this situation any more complicated than it needed to be. Kasey capitulated to common sense. “It’s a deal.”

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

From the balcony off his office on the second floor of his house, Aaron watched Kasey pull to a stop at the back entrance. Jumping out of her SUV, Kasey shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head and opened the back door. Aaron watched his niece leave the vehicle, all dark hair, sad eyes and long legs. So young, she’d experienced more upheaval than most people would in a lifetime. Aaron felt his stomach cramp and closed his eyes. Crap, Jay, where the hell are you? What more can I do to find you?

Look after Savvie, bro, he heard Jason’s voice say in his head. If you want to do right by me, look after my precious, precious daughter.

I am. She’s in my care until you come home, just as you wanted.

“I left a snack on the kitchen counter for you, Savannah.” Kasey’s voice floated up to him and Aaron opened his eyes to see her place her hand on Savannah’s shoulder. “Then you can have a quick swim before your ballet lessons. That work?”

It was Wednesday and Kasey, without further discussion, was still here and doing a fabulous job with his niece. Her natural warmth and her non-pushy attitude endeared her to Savannah. They’d clicked the moment they’d met.

He tended to avoid talking to Savannah about Jason but Kasey faced that issue head-on, allowing the little girl to express her fears, holding her when she cried and answering her many questions about where her dad could be. Kasey answered Savannah as honestly as she could, never giving the child false hope or making any promises that no one could fulfill.

Savannah wasn’t happy, far from it, but when she was around Kasey, she was more cheerful than he’d seen her in weeks. Both Savannah and Kasey were now living with him on a full-time basis. Sure, Savvie had been a frequent visitor to his house but it still felt strange to share his space with a woman and a girl, to find hair ties on his kitchen table and dolls on the floor. Kasey’s perfume floated through the house and there were flowers on the dining table and on the desk she used in the corner of his office. Music filled his house and his fridge was filled with girlie foods like low fat yogurt, frilly lettuce and hummus.

“Will you swim with me, Kasey?” Savannah asked, and Aaron tuned back into their conversation.

“Sure thing, sweetheart. I just need to check in with Aaron to see if he has any work for me,” Kasey replied.

Aaron saw the flash of disappointment cross Savannah’s face. With her dark brown hair and green eyes, she was going to be beautiful. Hell, if he discounted the fear and sadness, she already was.

“Nothing that can’t wait. Maybe I’ll join you two,” Aaron said, resting his arms on the railing of the balcony. Savannah’s head shot up and she managed a small smile before running into the house. Kasey stood in place, her arms folded across the cotton fabric of her sleeveless sundress. He could see the concern in her eyes, could read her thoughts as easily as he could the stock market.

“You don’t have to join us,” Kasey said.

“It’s fine. I’m hot and I need a break.” Aaron knew she worried that shedding most of their clothes would crack open the door that kept their mutual attraction under lock and key.

It was a swim, he wanted to tell Kasey. They’d have an almost-six-year-old to chaperone them. Aaron ran his hand across his face, reluctantly admitting that if he and Kasey found themselves in a pool alone, their clothes would be shed in world-record-breaking speed. They were that combustible.

Despite it only being a couple of days, living together in the same house was torture. They shared his office. They shared their meals. They were constantly in close proximity and, when he went to bed, he was deeply conscious that Kasey was across the hall in the bedroom next to Savannah’s. Every night he needed to talk himself out of slipping into her bed, of losing himself in her for an hour or two or most of the night.

He tried, he really did, not to think about her like that but at night, when the lights were off, he was ambushed by memories of how she felt...

God. Boss of the Year he was not.

Really, didn’t he have better things to do than fantasize about his employee? Aaron turned away and walked back into his cool study, dropping into his leather chair. He had too many responsibilities to allow himself to be distracted by Kasey with her endless curves and catlike amber eyes.

First and foremost, he needed to find out what the hell had happened to Jason. His gaze drifted to the silver frame on his desk: two little boys held fish up to the camera, their toothy grins wide and free. He and Jason were only a year apart and nobody knew his brother better than he did. Yeah, they’d fought and they’d competed—girls, sports, business—but they were brothers, and blood always, always, came first. He’d been Jason’s best man at his wedding, had handed him cigars and gotten him drunk when he’d become a dad. He’d kept his hand on his back and been a pillar of strength for him when he’d buried Ruth.

It had been more than two months since he’d heard from Jay and Aaron knew in his gut that something was wrong. Desperately wrong.

His brother was work obsessed but he’d never neglected Savannah. He was a good dad and, if Savannah was staying with Aaron or with Megan while Jay traveled, he made it a point to connect with his daughter every day, morning and night. Something terrible had to have happened because Aaron knew Jason would move heaven and earth to speak to his child.

Cole Sullivan, the PI his friend Will had hired, also believed that Jason was in deep crap. The note Megan had received—supposedly from Jason, stating he needed space to deal with Will’s death—had been proved, through handwriting analysis, not to be Jason’s.

Aaron could’ve told them that. Jason was a Phillips. They didn’t run away from their responsibilities. His brother would never turn his back on his daughter. He wouldn’t ignore his family’s entreaties to get in touch just so he could wallow in his own pain.

No, something was very, very wrong.

Aaron heard the door to his study open and Kasey walked in, heading for her desk in the corner. Instead of taking a seat, she bent from the waist down to peer at her monitor, her sundress perfectly delineating her heart-shaped ass, the same ass he’d slid his hands under to haul her against him as he’d lost himself in her eight months ago. He couldn’t help his eyes traveling down as her short dress rode up in the back, allowing him a look at her slim, tanned thighs. Those spectacular legs had encircled his hips, had been draped over his shoulders as he’d—

God, he needed to get laid. Eight months was far too damn long, but whenever he considered finding a date, Kasey’s face popped into his head. He didn’t want sex with some random female. He wanted Kasey. Which posed a problem, because the woman worked for him and was helping him, temporarily, to raise his niece. He couldn’t jeopardize either situation, or his honor, for sex. His neglected junk violently disagreed.

There was something—damn, what was the word?—homey about having his house and life invaded by two intensely girlie girls. Savvie’s occasional visits didn’t carry the same punch as having them here 24/7. The dolls and smells and music were comforting, and hearing feminine voices and the occasional trill of laughter made his house feel more like a home than the huge tomb he usually inhabited.

Aaron rubbed the back of his neck and reminded himself that this wasn’t normal. Normal was Jay back at home with Savvie, Kasey in her house, he in his. He couldn’t afford to get attached. All his relationships, romantic or not, tended to be messy and, as an added bonus, the people he loved tended to leave him. Sometimes both at the same time. No, it was better to stay emotionally detached.

But that resolve didn’t help him with his need-to-get-laid problem.

Kasey stood straight and Aaron quickly looked up, glad that his desk hid his arousal. There were certain things Kasey did not need to know and his craving for her was one of them. “Aaron, I’m falling behind.”

“How can I help?”

“Can you do Savvie’s ballet run? I could use that time to catch up here.”

Aaron nodded. It would do him good to get out of the house, away from the monitors and making financial decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars. That took its toll and he could feel a stress headache building between his eyes.

Kasey opened the right-hand drawer to his desk and lobbed him a bottle of aspirin. “Take two and come for a swim, it’ll help you unwind.”

Aaron opened the bottle, shook the pills into his hand and tossed them into his mouth. He dry-swallowed the pills and ignored Kasey’s wince. “How did Savvie do at day camp today?”

Kasey picked up a pen and threaded it through her fingers, something she often did. “She was better, I think. She told me that some boy brought in his guinea pig and that some of the girls were scared of it, but she’d loved it.” Kasey sent him a look and he knew that something big was coming his way, something he might not like. “I think you should buy her a puppy.”

Yep, there it was. “Kasey, do we not have enough on our hands without adding a puppy to the craziness?”

“She loves animals, Aaron, and she needs something to love.”

“She has me and Megan.”

“Her mom and dad have both left her, so she doesn’t trust other adults not to do the same,” Kasey argued, stubbornness settling into her expression.

She was not going to let this go. Damn, they were going to get a puppy, sometime soon.

He thought he should at least try to change her mind. “She’s not old enough to handle the responsibility of looking after a dog, Kasey.”

“This isn’t about being responsible, Aaron. It’s about her having something in her life she can hold on to,” she reiterated. “Having something to love. Everyone needs someone or something to love and, God knows, dogs are a hundred times more reliable than humans.”

And didn’t that statement, Aaron thought as she walked out of the room, give him a glimpse into her soul.

* * *

Kasey stomped down the hallway and ducked into her room. Kicking off her sandals, she immediately walked over to the French doors and flung them open, allowing the heat of the hot Texas day to slide into her bedroom. For the last year or so she’d felt perpetually cold—a physical reaction to emotional pain—so she didn’t mind a little heat.

Kasey rested her head against the door frame and closed her eyes. She was exhausted, which was the only reason she’d allowed those revealing words to leave her lips. Everyone needs someone or something to love and, God knows, dogs are a hundred times more reliable than humans...

And wasn’t that the truth. Kasey looked at the small picture on her bedside table, her gaze focusing on the mixed breed she held in her arms. She’d found Rufus in Cleveland, the puppy half-starved, for food and affection. Because her parents were generally oblivious, she’d managed to keep him hidden until they moved to... God, what city came after Cleveland? Cincinnati? Boston? It was all a blur. But she did remember the screaming fight she’d had with her parents, that if they insisted on lugging her from place to place, school to school, then the least they could do was let her have one friend, even if it was a canine. Ru, like her, had endured the moves and loved the summer holidays at her grandparents’ house in Houston. All she’d wanted was a stable home life, a place to settle down in, and she’d found that for three months of the year, in Houston.