Page 1 of The Nanny Next Door

1

AARON

It was a beautiful day in New York City, and in a truly stunning turn of events, I was trapped in a glossy conference room for the first of what would become a series of very important meetings.

Living the dream, I thought wryly.

For a lot of people, though, I really was living a dream. Even for my younger self, who dreamed of escaping poverty and the chaos of my childhood home. Little Aaron would be thrilled to have amassed the kind of wealth I had. But that didn’t make meetings like this one any less mind-numbing. A bunch of rich men talking about how to get even richer… it wasn’t exactly riveting.

At least the conference room of Pierce Enterprises, the company I’d built with my blood, sweat, and hard-earned cash, had a whole wall of windows I could stare out of while pretending to pay attention to the sharp-dressed men around me. No matter how long I’d lived in the city, I could still be blown away by the grandeur of it, especially with this high-rise view. The sight of the sprawling metropolis, the glimpse I could see of Central Park’s green in the midst of industrial gray, was the most interesting thing happening right now.

I should be more interested in the meeting, considering I’d called it. Pierce Enterprises was looking at a partnership with a Chilean entrepreneur and philanthropist, Felipe Rojas, who had dedicated his substantial wealth toward reducing mortality rates in the third world. It would be good for our public persona to be involved in funding the kind of work Felipe did.

Felipe was at the other end of the long glass table, directly across from me, his handsome face pensive as he listened intently to one of my board members prattle on about profit margins. His business partner and the apparent scientific mind behind the operation, Miles Kramer, was seated to his right. Kramer was a draw for my company, too. He was renowned across the globe for his work and was doubly impressive for only being in his mid-thirties. As a company with its fingers in a lot of different pies, Pierce Enterprises could find all kinds of uses for that brain if we had unfettered access to it.

Though I resisted personal attachments most days, especially in this arena, I also liked Rojas and Kramer on a human level. Unlike a lot of the businessmen who came knocking at my door, these two resisted the shallowness of extreme wealth. Rojas was kind and charismatic, a people person without being obnoxiously chipper. Kramer, on the other hand, was serious and clearly driven by a desire for knowledge rather than fame or acclaim. The idea of spending more time with these two men was refreshing. Perhaps our collaboration could result in a pleasant camaraderie, if not real friendship.

I rarely had time for real friends.

My single-minded business focus might make me as unlike Felipe and Miles as one could be, realistically. Unlike the two of them, my main motivator for working as hard as I did was the money. I knew what it was like to have nothing, and I had sworn for my entire thirty-eight years of life that I’d never go back to that again. Luckily, now that I’d hit that elusive billionaire milestone, I didn’t have to worry about that happening.

Suddenly breaking through my maudlin thoughts and the quiet murmur of our business meeting, my assistant burst through the door with a panicked look on her face. I stood from my seat, annoyed.

“Holly, you know you’re not supposed—” I started to reprimand her, as much a show of power to the colleagues at my table as anything since my long-time assistant did know better than to interrupt. But her words cut me off and stopped my tirade in its tracks.

“So sorry, Mr. Pierce, sir. It’s your sister. She’s in the lobby.”

Christ. Whitney’s presence was always a harbinger of bad news, and this certainly explained Holly’s faux-pas. “Sister” was practically “code red” around here. Besides, I hadn’t seen Whitney in over a year. I wasn’t even sure how she knew where my office was.

I supposed our last name plastered on the building might have given her a clue, to be fair.

“Pardon me, gentlemen,” I announced in as calm a voice as I could manage while my heart thundered. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m able. Shaeffer, take notes,” I shot to the young man on my left—an associate’s son who was interning with my company as a favor to said associate.

“Yes, sir.”

I followed my frazzled assistant out of the conference room and into the sleek, spacious lobby. There, standing in her tattered jeans and a holey T-shirt of a band she’d listened to religiously as a teenager, stood my baby sister, Whitney. And she looked fucking terrible.

Not just because of the contrast between her disheveled appearance and the perfectly-curated modern furniture, glass and chrome, and the natural light of the lobby. Her brown hair was a matted mess, her eyes bloodshot, her face pale and thin enough that our prominent Pierce family cheekbones appeared to jut out frighteningly. And to add insult to injury, she was holding a baby.

I knew I had a nephew, but only in passing. I’d never met the little guy, and I couldn’t even remember the name Whitney had given him, which probably said just as much about my uncle abilities as it did about my relationship with my sister. It was something like Joey or Jesse, I thought.

He was a cute little guy, though, with blonde curls starting to form over his little ears and a plump, dimpled baby face. His eyes were still baby blue and surprisingly intelligent as they stared at me across the way, but they’d probably turn dark like the rest of the Pierce clan’s when he got a little older. I didn’t know his father. My nephew was dressed in a stained T-shirt and a diaper, and he had a pacifier in his mouth. The sight made my rare-to-react heart almost crack.

“Hey, big brother,” Whitney greeted me with an unhealthy rasp to her voice.

With very little fanfare, I ushered Whitney into an adjacent room—a recently-fired employee’s former office that had no windows to the lobby.

“Whoa, nice to see you, too.” She half-laughed as she stumbled over her feet. I locked the door behind her and stared her down. Whitney, uncowed, just gave a half-dazed, “How ya been?”

The migraine was starting behind my eyes. Or maybe that was just my body’s natural reaction to my sister’s presence.

“I’m fine, Whitney. What do you want?” My tone was harsher than her attempt at friendliness could justify, but there was a lot of baggage here. I knew Whitney wasn’t here just for a visit. The last time I’d seen her, she’d screamed until I gave her two grand and sent her on her way. I was prepared for a similar scene.

“Can’t I be here just to see you?” She frowned, but the way her jaw visibly tensed and her eyes couldn’t hold mine told me she was definitely strung out on something. She hitched my nephew up further on her hip. “You always think the worst of me.”

“I know you,” I shot back. “How much money do you need?”

“I don’t want your money. But alright, fine. I do need your help with somethin’, if you must know. It’s about Jamie.”

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