The Nanny Solution

“Get over here!” Audrey screamed.

He heard it again, that bombing sound, as a huge limb crashed to the ground behind him, just missing him. He turned around and just looked at it, mouth hanging open. They’d nearly killed him in his own front yard!

“What the hell are they doing dropping limbs like that when there are people around?”

“They’re trimming your trees,” she yelled back. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here! It’s my house! I thought somebody had started bombing the neighborhood!”

“Bomb the neighborhood?” she repeated, making it sound absolutely ridiculous, which he knew it likely was. Still…

“That’s what it sounded like when it woke me up,” he said, still yelling. “They could have killed me!”

“I know. I saw. I’m the one who got you out of the way,” Audrey said.

One of the hard hat guys came running over to them then, looking as if someone had taken a few years off his life.

“What the hell is going on?” he yelled at Audrey.

Simon stepped in, intending to stop that right there. He might raise his voice every now and then, but he wasn’t going to stand by while anybody else talked to her that way and if that made him a hypocrite, well…fine!

Audrey must have known what was coming, because she stepped between them and put up a hand to stop Simon from getting any closer.

The next thing he knew, she had her palm pressed flat against his bare chest.

And that stopped him cold.

Chapter Five

Audrey felt as if she’d been burned.

No, scared half to death and then burned. Burned in a not altogether bad way, but certainly not good, either.

She kept her hand on his bare chest just long enough to stop him, along with a look in her eyes she’d used on her daughter when she was two and stubborn as could be. Then she turned back to the head of the tree crew and told him she’d take care of Simon.

“Tell him to stay the hell out of the work zone,” the guy said, then added. “There’s no one else on the property now, right?”

Audrey heard Simon growl a bit. She turned back to him. “Please tell me your daughter isn’t here?”